Yemisi Izuora
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Wednesday disclosed that the country’s Balance of Payment improved by a surplus of $2.80 million in the fourth quarter 2018, from $4.54 million recorded in the third quarter of same year.
The CBN disclosed this in a report titled: “Brief on Balance of Payments Statistics Q4’18” posted on its website.
The bank said: “The provisional Balance of Payments (BOP) estimates for Q4 2018 showed a significant improvement in the BOP outcome.
“The overall balance of payments recorded a surplus of $2.80 million compared to a huge deficit of $4,542.08 million and a surplus of $6,180.40 million recorded in the preceding quarter and corresponding period of 2017, respectively.
“The current account balance (CAB) improved from a deficit of $1,544.41 million in Q3 2018 to a surplus of $1,104.57 million in Q4 2018.
“The financial account balance indicated a net acquisition of financial assets of $2,327.91 million in the review period as against a net incurrence of financial liabilities of $4,615.17 million recorded in the preceding period.”
“Direct Investments inflow decreased by 28.3 per cent to US$314.44 million when compared with the preceding quarter of 2018. It however, indicated a decline of 67.2 per cent when compared to the corresponding period of 2017. Portfolio Invest- ments inflow to the economy decreased significantly to US$1,382.40 million in Q4 2018 from US$1,790.83 million and US$3,787.16 million in the preceding quarter and the corresponding period of 2017, respectively . However, other invest- ment liabilities increased to US$1,421.26 million when compared with a reversal of US$3,070.76 million recorded in the preceding quarter “
The bank also put the stock of external reserves as at end-December 2018 to be US$42,594.84million, indicating a depletion of 0.03 per cent when compared with the level in the preceding quarter. “However, when compared with the corresponding period of 2017, it indicated an accretion of 8.2 per cent. The level of external reserves could finance approximately 13.0 months of imports, compared with 10.3 and 15.6 months of imports cover recorded in the preceding quarter and corresponding period of 2017, respectively. These were however, above the WAMZ and global benchmarks of 6 and 3 months, respectively” the bank said.