Briefing Paper

Nigeria Economic Update Issue 9

This short update discusses several issues briefly. Firstly it talks about Crude Oil and Gas and specifically the OPEC weekly basket price which decreased by 7.4 percent from $29.20 per barrel on February 5th to $27.04 per barrel on February 12, 2016. Under the heading : Financial Inclusion it speaks about recent data on the financial inclusion rate which shows a very marginal increase from 60.3 percent in 2012 to 60.5 percent in 2016. This implies that about 40 million adults are still financially excluded, despite the efforts from both government and non-governmental actors to increase access to basic financial services. Under the heading : Exchange Rate – The naira’s depreciation is discusses which went from 8.2 percent from N305/$ on February 5th, to N330/ $ on February 12th 2016. The next heading is Stock Market. The All Share Index (ASI) and market capitalization grew by 5.05% at the end of the trading session on February 12, 2016 from the previous week.