Economy

Significant political progress has been made in Nigeria in the last 18 months. The ballot box has taken centre stage as the country has carried out a peaceful handover of power – its first since becoming independent – at both the executive and legislative level. The development is a significant one for this country of 184m people, although the...

As Africa’s most populous nation, and with the biggest oil and gas reserves in the region, Nigeria has long been one of the continent’s sought-after markets, but also one of its most complex and challenging. A GDP rebasing in 2014 modernised the country’s statistical measurements, expanding GDP to N94.14trn ($155.1bn at the time of printing)...

With a population of 184m, three-quarters of whom are under the age of 30, job creation is critical for Nigeria to sustain its headline growth. Unemployment is increasing rapidly. The official rate climbed from 8.2% in the first quarter of 2015 to 9.9% in third quarter and 10.4% by the year’s end. The ranks of the underemployed – those working...

After a series of delays, Nigeria’s expansionary 2016 budget, which President Muhammadu Buhari submitted to the National Assembly in December 2015, was approved in March 2016. The proposed N6.08trn ($19.2bn) budget represented a 22% increase over the previous year.

The history of the naira as it has alternated between fixed and floating exchange rate regimes has always been closely tied to the price of oil. In June 2016 the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced a flexible interbank exchange rate market, effectively floating the naira in a departure from recent policy. The currency’s value has since...

Standing as a critical pillar of the Indonesian economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the country’s largest employers and a significant contributor to GDP growth, although they have been hit by Indonesia’s economic slowdown, with many struggling to access credit and export markets, in addition to feeling the pain of a...