Nigeria attracted bonds worth $6bn after the recent elections, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The CBN noted that the Nigerian bond market continued to remain one of the most attractive investment destinations.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said, “Following the successful conduct of the general elections in February 2019, over $6bn has come into the local bond market, indicating continued confidence in the strength of the Nigerian economy by investors.”
While mentioning the Bloomberg’s emerging-market local-currency government bonds index, which covered major emerging markets such as Nigeria, South Africa and Argentina, it stated that Nigeria’s bond continued to top the chart due to the stability of the Investors’ and Exporters’ foreign exchange Window rate and the yields being high by emerging-market standards.
It stated that investors were also sure that they could exit their positions if they wanted, which had been crucial in driving other investors into the market.
While speaking on the agenda for the next four years, Emefiele noted that reasonable measure of success had been achieved in the last four years into the pre-2019 election era, such as exiting recession, gradually growing the country’s Gross Domestic Product, moderating the level of inflation, stable exchange rates and maintaining a comfortable level of external reserves.
He said the main post-election strategies should be consolidating on growth, implementing strategies and policies that would aggressively grow jobs on a massive scale, and diversifying the base of the Nigerian economy away from relying on crude oil.
Doing these, he added, would require additional efforts by all stakeholders.
He said that supporting domestic productivity should be considered a paramount issue as the country had very little time.
“There can never be a more opportune time to diversify the base of the Nigerian economy than under the current administration and this opportunity must not be lost,” he said.
According to him, Nigerians must close ranks and work to complement policies that would primarily be tagged ‘Grow, produce and consume made in Nigeria.’
Doing this, he noted, would require that monetary and fiscal authorities must not only put in place policies geared to support the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, but the policies must be implemented with vigour.
He said, “On our part, the CBN will aggressively deepen its foray into development banking. We shall ensure that adequate support (through any means whatsoever) is directed to support producers of products such as rice, fish, tomato, wheat, textiles, palm oil and the range of items in our list of 43 items excluded from forex in the Nigerian forex market.”
