By Uche Mbah
The balance of trade between Nigeria and other countries declined by 27.3 percent in the second quarter of 2020. This means that Nigeria imported 27% more products than it exported within the last six months, said the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.
According to the Bureau, Nigerian trade stood at a total of N6.24 trillion in the second quarter of 2020.
The bulk of the trade from Nigeria may have come from crude oil. The main export product of the country, which suffered a setback due to the Oil crash occasioned by the COVID 19 pandemic, aside from the Organisation of Petroleum exporting countries, OPEC, trade war with Russia over the Gulf regional oil.
Nigeria sold little oil due to low demand during the period under review.
But Nigeria imported total goods and services worth N4.02 trillion within the last three months but exported only goods and services worth N2.22 trillion in the same period. This resulted in an external trade deficit of N1.8 trillion.
“Consequently, the trade balance recorded a deficit of N1,803.3billion, marking the third consecutive quarter of negative trade balance.
“This compares with trade in the goods deficit of N421.3 billion recorded in Q1, 2020, and N579.06billion recorded in Q4 2019,” the NBS said.
In the first three months of the year, Nigeria’s exports declined by 45.64, while imports fell by 10.69 percent in the second quarter of the year under review.
“The value of total trade year to date amounted to N14,829.4billion, indicating a drop of 11.96 percent compared to half-year 2019,” NBS said.
This can be broken down as follows: import of Energy goods increased tremendously by 591.47 percent in the first quarter, Manufactured goods imports increased by 4.69 percent and imported Agricultural goods rose by 59.01 percent, the NBS had said.
The import of raw material increased by 85.69 percent, Solid mineral imports increased in by 35.51 percent. Other oil products imports decreased by 82.32 percent while total exports were 45.64 percent lower in the second quarter.
Raw material goods export recorded a decrease of 56.2 percent in Q2,2020 compared to Q1, 2020 and 52.4 percent compared with the same quarter in 2019.
