Overview Of The Nigerian Economy
Year 2015 Economic Data
- Status: Biggest economy in Africa
- Commercial size: Largest market in Africa
- Consumer market by population: 170 million people
- Inflation rate: 7%
- GDP growth rate: 7%
- GDP output per annum: $510 Billion
- Stock Market Capitalization: $ 80 billion
- Exchange rate: 163 Naira equals 1 US Dollar
- Minimum wage: $1 per hour
- Interest rate on savings: 5%
- Interest rate on fixed term deposits: 10%
- FDI: $6 billion
- Consolidated Foreign Investment Inflow: $85 billion
- Government external debt: $8 billion
- Government consolidated external cash reserves: $50 billion
- Government reserves of natural resources and minerals: $30 trillion
- Oil production and reserves ranking: 6th in the world
A famous square
World economic forum meeting
Gathering of world business leaders in Abuja, May 2014. The most successful world economic forum meeting ever.
Canadian Inkas Armoured Vehicle Corporation
Office in Victoria Island
Chinese President in Abuja
Chinese President in Abuja for another round of multi-billion dollar business deals, May 2014
At the centre of the world
Construction site Eko Atlantic City
Calabar Carnival
A big annual attraction for tourists from around the world
Radisson Hotels in Lagos
Central Business District Lagos Island
Sheraton Lagos
Lekki Ikoyi Bridge
Marina Metropolis
Lekki peninsula residential community
Tourists in Calabar
Canadian minister of international development
With his Nigerian counterpart in Abuja, May 2014
Shoprite Stores
Prominent lagoon
Road network
Skypower Canada
Skypower Canada $5 billion dollar solar power plant deal signed May 2014
Mechanized farming
Mountain cable cars at Obudu Cattle Ranch
Tourists ride the mountain cable cars at Obudu Cattle Ranch
Shoprite-parking-lot
Shoppers at Shoprite Stores
Nigerian states
On the rocks
Civic Centre
Eko Atlantic City
Under construction
United States former president Bill Clinton
Joins Nigeria’s president Jonathan to open the Eko Atlantic City project
Asian and African Businesses
There are hundreds of Asian and South African businesses in Nigeria, many make more profits than they do in their own home countries. A few are mentioned here.
China Railway Construction Company signed contracts for a $13 billion project in May 2014.
Nissan Motor Company of Japan opened a new vehicle plant in Nigeria around June 2014.
Shoprite South Africa, is Nigeria’s only real grocery and general merchandise retail chain store and with just about 10 stores built in world class shopping malls for 170 million people, these few sale outlets are usually overcrowded by shoppers and cannot meet the nationwide demand for expansion. Often, there are long queues for groceries inside the stores at peak periods and customers wait for hours on the lines while the store’s car parking lots are filled to overflow levels.
MTN telecommunications South Africa has 45 million mobile phone customers in Nigeria’s huge market of 173 million mobile phone users.
American and European Businesses
Many foreign companies have a much bigger business in Nigeria than they do in their own home country of origin. Many of these companies earn their biggest annual profits in any single country worldwide, from their Nigerian branches alone. In recent years, some American and European companies reduced the effect of tough competition and market saturation at home by spreading out into the huge and growing 170 million people consumer market in Nigeria.
There are hundreds of successful American and European companies making good profits in Nigeria, the major ones are listed.
- Ford Motor Company
- Chevrolet
- Exxon-Mobil
- Chevron-Texaco
- Shell Petroleum
- Total Oil & Gas
- Unilever
- Cadbury
- Pfizer (Neimeth)
- Nestle
- GlaxoSmithkline
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Citibank
- Lafarge
- American International Insurance
- British American Insurance
- Hilton hotels
- Sheraton hotels
- UPS courier
- Fedex courier
- Coca Cola
- KFC fast food
Canadian Businesses
There are dozens of successful Canadian companies doing very profitable business in Nigeria, the biggest are mentioned here.
Manitoba Hydro has a customer base of 28 million households in Nigeria, compared to 542,000 households in Canada.
SkyPower Global in May 2014 signed a contract to invest $ 5 billion in Nigeria to build one of the worlds largest solar power plants.
INKAS sells brand new armoured cars, SUVs, and cash-in-transit vans to private citizens and commercial banks in Nigeria for many years and has a big chunk of the market for banks and high net worth individuals.
Types of businesses sure to succeed in Nigeria with private initiative:
- Retail sales and wholesales chain stores for groceries and general merchandise
- Cell phone handsets manufacturing and export
- Real estate sales and development
- Hospitality industry, hotels and guest houses
- Hand portable home air conditioning and cooling appliances
- Education, privately owned high school and university
- Movie Industry, Film special effects and 3D animation studios
- Medical, walk in clinic and medical diagnostics
- Wi-Fi Internet services
- Transit Bus service for city commuters
- Agricultural crop nutrients and Fertilizers
- Fast food and coffee shop chain
Security
Nigeria’s capital city Abuja and commercial city Lagos, are as safe as many of the top twenty cities in the world.
Canada’s honourable Minister of International Development, visited in May 2014 to represent Canada at the World Economic Forum meeting of about 1,000 global business leaders and a couple of Countries’ heads of state, with the president of China also in attendance.
Only about 10% of Nigeria’s land territory has ever witnessed the just ended terrorist attacks. Thus about 90% of Nigerian land mass territory has never had any terrorist attack in it’s entire history and is safe for business.
To date, there is no report of any North American, Asian, or European business enterprise or foreign investor that has left Nigeria due to the past security situation, which has now become past history.
Currently, a massive influx of foreign direct investment is flowing into Nigeria from corporate giants and Forbes rated companies from all over Europe and North America.
The security issues are now very minor and Nigeria is as safe and free from terrorism as Europe.
Today, Nigeria is still Canada’s biggest trading partner in Sub-Saharan Africa.