Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, reported a 73.8 percent increase in its imports in the third quarter of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said. Imports rose to N2.11 trillion in Q2 to N4.17 trillion in Q3, NBS said in a report released late Monday.
The increase according to the statistical agency was as a result of the importation of submersible drilling platforms in August which the NBS said was quite expensive.
“The huge increase in import value during the quarter, resulted into a decrease in the Country’s Trade balance,” NBS said in the report.
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Figures compiled from the NBS yesterday revealed that the value of import in the quarter under review also represented a 67.7increase compared with the import value in the corresponding quarter in 2017.
Total export value over the same period stood at N4.85 trillion, representing an increase of 7.8 percent over Q2, 2018.Set featured image
With these figures, Nigeria’s external trade over the period totalled N9 trillion. This represents an increase of rise of N.12 trillion or 30.7 percent over the value of N6.9 trillion recorded in the second quarter.
The NBS figures show that India, with 15.76 percent, is the largest destination of Nigerian exports. Others are Spain 10.76 percent; France 10.31 percent; South Africa 6.91 percent, and Netherlands 5.69 percent
Nigeria on the other hand imported the most products from South Korea with 29.11 percent, while China, Netherlands, Belgium and United States reported 14.17 percent , 11.58 percent, 6.99 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively of total import trade in the review quarter.
Endurance Okafor
