Food Importation Gulps $689.88 million in Q1 2024
The import of food products gulped about $689.88 million in the first quarter of 2024, which is about 17% of the total foreign exchange (FX) spending on imports.
This is according to the sectoral utilization of foreign exchange data contained in the quarterly statistical bulletin of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Based on the data, Nigeria spent slightly over $4 billion on imports in the period under review.
The CBN data shows that there was a 40% increase in the amount of FX spent on food import, from $493.24 million in the last quarter of 2023 to $689.88 million in the following quarter, which is Q1 2024.
Year-on-year, there was a slight increase of 2% from $677.61 million recorded in the same quarter of the previous year.
The data further shows that firms in the food product sector were the second-highest spenders of foreign exchange for imports.
Leading on the list are firms in the industrial sector, which spent the lion’s share of $1.94 billion.
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While firms in the manufacturing sector spent $594.63 million, those in the oil and gas spent $522.90 million on imports in Q1 2024.
The agricultural sector spent the lowest FX for imports at $35.52 million in the period under review.
Within the first quarter of 2024, Nigeria’s imported food inflation rose by 25%, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria’s imported food inflation increased significantly from the 26.29% recorded in January 2024 to 32.89% in March of the same year.
A month-by-month analysis shows that January starts the year with a high imported food index and a significant inflation rate of 26.29%, indicating that the cost of imported food is already elevated.
In February 2024, the imported food inflation increased to 29.81%, marking a notable jump of 3.52%-points in the inflation rate from January.
The trend continues upward in March, with the imported food inflation rate climbing to 32.89%, an increase of 3.08%-points from February.
Also, within the same period, general food inflation rose by 13%, from 35.41% in January 2024 to 40.01% by March of the same year.
