THE nation’s fiscal and monetary authorities were upbeat when results of the country’s  USD1 billion Euro- bond offer indicated that it was oversubscribed by a landslide, a massive 800 percent. Not only that, the rate was equally significantly lower than expected. Both outcomes point to positive investor sentiment.

Our enquiries on the results indicated that the trio of the Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun; National Planning and Budget Minister, Udo Udoma; the Central Bank (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele; Abraham Nwankwo,  Director-General of the Debt Management Office and other finance egg heads across the ministries and departments must have done a good selling of the country’s investment profile.

The circumstances were not too good as at the time they embarked on the road-show last week, and the marks from the international rating agencies were unflattering. In fact the last rating by Fitch came out near negative at B+ (lowest investment grade) as the team was already marketing in London last week.

Investors were equally expressing concerns over Nigeria’s crises-ridden foreign exchange market, the militancy-threatened oil output and the frenzy around the health of President Muhammadu Buhari.

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As credible as these concerns might be, it was clear that Nigeria’s lead marketers were primed with good investment case for the country against the backdrop of firmed-up oil price in the international market, which is significantly above its 2017 budget benchmark. Also, the focus was shifted to Nigeria’s rising external reserves. These and other traditional market advantages of Nigeria’s economy, may have accounted for the favourable Eurobond outing and we commend the team.

However, we want to urge a continued mutual cooperation between the fiscal and the monetary authorities after this success because there are still much more to be done in firming up both the international investment image of Nigeria as well as the domestic economy.  The situation where monetary policy is always struggling to accommodate fiscal challenges thereby rendering both interest rate regimes and foreign exchange strategies of the CBN defective and sub-optimal would not help the cause of domestic economic stimulation agenda of the fiscal authorities.

We commend the new-found synergy between the CBN and the Federal Government, which we spent the past 20 months advocating. We also urge more interaction and policy harmony between the two key fiscal policy ministries, (Finance and Planning), in order to extend the success recorded last week internationally, to  the domestic investment environment.

The private sector that has been struggling to keep its head above water due to inclement operating environment should be attended to urgently. In particular, poor infrastructure, high cost of doing business, dearth of utilities among others, are still crippling domestic investment. It is even dis enabling foreign direct investment inflow.

The country cannot push its development far with just foreign portfolio investments, no matter how long such bonds as Eurobond are tenured.