Oil & Gas still dominant

By Elizabeth Adegbesan

Nigeria’s Terms    of Trade (ToT) in the second quarter of 2018 (Q2’18) increased by 11.2 percentage point to 111.2 percent, indicating a deterioration in the value of the country’s exports against imports.

Terms of Trade  can be interpreted as the amount of import goods an economy can purchase per unit of export goods.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS), Commodity Price Indices and Terms of Trade report for Q2’18, released yesterday says the country’s top five trading partner countries were Belgium, China, Spain, the Netherlands and India.

It further says while the major exports  to these countries are crude petroleum and natural gas, the major imports from them was refined petrol.

All region group export index rose by 9.0 percent as a result of trade with the Americas while the All region group import index fell by 2.0 percent as a result of trade with Oceania region during the period.

The report further revealed that during the period All Commodity Group import price index rose by 2.0 percent driven by miscellaneous manufactured articles while the All Commodity Group export price index rose by 11 percent driven by mineral products, wood products, live animals and vegetable products.

A month-on-month breakdown shows significant fluctuations as the All Region ToT rose 1.2 percent in February and fell 4.8 percent in March. In April, ToT increased 16.1 percent, fell 2.4 percent in May and ended the first half of 2018 by going up 1.7 percent in June. The report stated: “Nigeria’s All Products ToT indices for April, May and June 2018 stood at 100.5, 111.1 and 109.2 percents, respectively. These indices showed favourable ToT for all the months of the second quarter, indicating that Nigeria used 0.5, 11.1 and 9.05 percent less of her exports to procure the same level of imports in the months under review.