Nigeria’s agricultural exports drop by 38% in Q2 as imports rise – NBS

The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said  that agricultural exports out of Nigeria dropped by 38.2 per cent in the second quarter (Q2) of this year, compared to the first quarter  (Q1) but rose by 6.3 per cent year-on-year while goods imported to Nigeria rose in value by 59.01 per cent in the second quarter compared to the first quarter and by 66.28 per cent compared to the corresponding quarter in 2019.

This was disclosed in the Foreign Trade in Goods Statistics report of the Bureau published on Wednesday.

According to the report, Nigeria’s total trade in agricultural goods in the second quarter of the year stood at N493.7 billion, of which exports accounted for N78.1 billion.

“Analysis by economic region showed that most agricultural goods were exported to Asia, Europe and America valued at N43.6 billion, N26.4 billion and N6.6 billion,” the parts of the report reads.

It says the key drivers of agricultural products exports were superior quality of raw cocoa beans, sesamum seeds, cashew nuts, good fermented cocoa beans and more.

The main consumers of superior quality cocoa were countries such as the Netherlands (N9.3 billion), Indonesia (N3.7billion) and the United States (N2.4 billion), the report noted.

“Other agricultural exports were sesamum seeds exported to Japan (N6.0 billion) and to China, worth N2.3 billion,” the report stated.

The NBS explained that cashew nuts exported to Vietnam were worth N12 billion, while durum wheat worth N41 billion was imported from the United States, Russia (N28.8 billion) and Latvia (N24.5 billion) respectively.

The NBS report highlights that the value of Nigeria’s merchandise trade stood at N6,242.4 billion in Q2, which it says indicates a sharp fall of 27.30 per cent compared to Q1 and 27.46 per cent compared to Q2 of 2019.

“The value of the total trade year to date amounted to N14,829.4 billion, indicating a drop of 11.96 per cent compared to half year 2019,” the NBS report noted.

It says Nigeria’s import component was valued at N4,022.9 billion, representing a drop of 10.69 per cent in Q2 against the level recorded in Q1 but was an increase of 0.39 per cent year-on-year.

The report says the export component accounted for N2,219.5 billion of the total trade, which indicated a decline of 45.64 per cent against the value recorded in Q1 and 51.73 per cent when compared to Q2 of 2019.

“Consequently, the trade balance recorded a deficit of N1,803.3 billion, marking the third consecutive quarter of negative trade balance. This compares with trade in goods deficit of N421.3 billion recorded in Q1, 2020 and N579.06 billion recorded in Q4 2019,” the report said.