Pictures From the Event

Participants

Participants at the Midyear Economic Assessment sessions on 27th July 2006 were from:

Comments

Comments received as feedback from participants have included:

• Dialogue, Data and Inferences very useful.
• The Assessment is very comprehensive and is a good source of understanding our market and its peculiarities. I also like the forward looking perspective of the facilitator as this is important in making money in our environment.
• Key Summaries of our economy vis-à-vis the rest of the world was very useful.
• Good Presentation of data.
• Educative!
• The Overall ties given on how to check the direction of the economy was practically useful.
• The Sharing of ideas and interaction was useful.
• I was able to gain more insight into the national economy.
• Interactive Session shed more light on Inflation.
• I found the correlation between CBN’s MRR and inflation versus Government Borrowing Rate very useful.

Issues Discussed

1. Commodity prices
   The current global economic upswing continues to manifest most visibly in oil and non-oil commodity price upsurges. Most emerging economies have seen marked increases in their external reserves and GDP growth rates, coupled with low single-digit inflation and interest rates.
2. Real economic activity
   Output: Crop production and trading contributes the bulk of measured growth in real activity; telecommunications and manufacturing also contributes significantly to measured growth. Latent growth opportunities abound in over a dozen sub-sectors.
   Domestic spending: Exports, net exports, and investment have grown steadily in the last three years; consumer spending, on the contrary, has declined steadily, while government spending and imports have been unstable.
3. Inflation and asset prices
   Gaps between interest rates in the different segments of the Nigerian credit market provide clues for anticipating inflation, excess liquidity, exchange rate depreciation, and parallel market premium in a surprisingly predictable way.
4. Financial assets
   The relative contributions of cash, deposits, loans, bonds, equity, and foreign capital-flows to Nigeria’s overall financial strength.