Nigeria’s capital importation increases 37.5% in 2018 as UK emerges top investor
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
Latest statistics on capital importation into Nigeria released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that the United Kingdom emerged as the top source of capital investment in Nigeria in 2018 with $6.01 billion.
The report released Wednesday indicates that UK’s investment in Nigeria accounted for 35.74 percent of the total capital inflow in 2018. Malaysia was the country with the least capital investment into Nigeria, accounting for $1 million.
The total value of capital importation into Nigeria in 2018 stood at $16.8 billion in 2018 compared to $12.2 billion capital imported in 2017, representing a year-on-year growth of 37.5 percent.
According to the NBS report, the largest amount of capital importation by type was received through portfolio investment, which accounted for 70.20 percent or $11.8 billion of total capital importation, followed by other investment, which accounted for 22.69 percent or $3.8 billion of total capital, and then Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) which accounted for 7.11 percent or $1.2 billion of total capital imported in 2018.
By sector, Capital importation by shares, which is closely related to Equity investment (FDI and Portfolio Investment) dominated 2018 reaching $10,.4 billion of the total capital Importation in 2018.
On a quarter on quarter basis, the total value of capital importation into Nigeria in the fourth quarter of 2018, stood at $2.1 billion.
This however represents a decrease of 25.05 percent compared to Q3 2018 and 60.24 percent decrease compared to the fourth quarter of 2017.