NBS: Abuja, Cross River, Jigawa Lead in Inter-City Transport Fares

* Average fare up to 23.99% month-on-month

A report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with N375.63 per day, Cross River (N242.73) and Jigawa (N250.00) were the states with the highest bus journey fare within city in December 2017.

On the hand, states with lowest bus journey fare within city in December 2017 were Bauchi (N80.00), Anambra (N102.21) and Borno (N105.71).

The transport fare watch report for December 2017 covered the following categories namely: bus journey within the city per drop constant route; bus journey intercity, state route, charge per person; air fare charge for specified routes single journey; journey by motorcycle (Okada) per drop; and water way passenger transport.

The report revealed that average fare paid by commuters for bus journey within the city increased by 23.99 per cent month-on-month (m/m) and 14.78 per cent year-on-year (y/y) to N171.34 in December 2017 from N138.19 in November 2017.

According to the NBS, “Average fare paid by commuters for bus journey intercity increased by 14.04 per cent m/m and 5.22 per cent y/y to N1,716.26 in December 2017 from N1,505.00 in November 2017. States with highest bus journey fare intercity in December 2017 were Abuja FCT (N5,019.00), Adamawa (N3,242.86) and Benue (N2,803.85) while states with lowest bus journey fare within city in December 2017 were Yobe (N1,000.00), Enugu (N1,063.35) and Kano (N843.75).”

In a related development, the balance of payments (BoP) for the third quarter of 2017 released by the NBS revealed that the current-account surplus widened from the equivalent of 1.4 per cent of gross domestic products (GDP) in Q2 to 2.4 per cent.

Also, merchandise exports increased by 10.8 per cent on the quarter while imports declined by 8.4 per cent as Nigeria emerged slowly from recession. The 11.7 per cent share of oil and gas exports in GDP was the highest since Q3 2014.

That of other exports, which were shown as electricity and non-oil, declined from 1.4 per cent of GDP in Q2 to 0.7 per cent.

The report revealed that net deficit on the services account

widened from 3.7 per cent to 4.9 per cent of GDP in Q3.

The NBS report also showed that debits on the account for travel have risen steeply from $490 million in Q1 to $1.36 billion in Q2 and $2.23 billion.

Meanwhile, analysts at FBN Quest believe this is proof of one success of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s several foreign exchange windows: its supply of foreign exchange to banks at N357 per United States dollar for their on-sale to the retail segment at N360 for the payment of invisibles such as travel.

“We see further evidence in the BoP of this success in the increase of $890 million in debits for other business services over the same two quarters. In contrast, the net deficit on the income account narrowed from 3.3 per cent to 2.7 per cent of GDP in Q3 due to a smaller outflow for investment income. Net current transfers, which are overwhelmingly workers’ remittances, had another strong quarter, achieving the highest level since Q4 2010 in US dollar terms.