Nigeria’s external trade has slumped negatively due to imbalance between imports and exports, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed.
According to the report which was made available to newsmen, the total value of Nigeria’s external trade in the third quarter of 2016 was N 4,721.9 billion.
This figure consisted of exports worth N2,309 billion and imports worth N2,413 billion, indicating a slight negative trade balance of N104 billion.
In previous quarters, the sector which contributed the most to total trade was crude oil, which was all for exports.
In total, the sector accounted for N1,944 billion, or 41.2% of the total trade in the third quarter of 2016.
The manufacturing sector had the second largest share of total trade, accounting for N1,218.3 billion or 25.8% of the total, but in contrast to crude oil, was dominated by imports.
Other oil products were also a prominent sector, and accounted for N1,029.4 billion, or 21.8% of the total.
The report further revealed that the remaining sectors were relatively small proportion of total trade as raw materials accounted for 6.37% of the total, agriculture 4.43%, solid minerals 0.43%, and trade in energy goods with negligible N0.1 billion.
“In third quarter, Nigeria had a particularly strong export relationship with India, with export intensities of 5.6, 8.3 and 3.9 July, August and September respectively.
Spain was also a key export market with intensities of 3.6, 4.4 and 1.9 during the same months,” the report stated.