Nigeria needs $15bn to revive slumping economy

NIGERIA needs $15 billion (R207bn) from asset sales and borrowing to revive a slumping economy and boost foreign reserves, according to Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man.

“Through sales of assets, through loans from Bank of China or wherever, we need something like $15bn,” Dangote, a Nigerian national, said in a Bloomberg TV interview at the US-Africa Business Forum in New York on Wednesday. “We’re having a problem as the reserves are low. The banks, entrepreneurs, everybody is speculating on the currency.”

Nigeria’s economy, battered by low oil prices and a dearth of foreign investment, is set to shrink in 2016 for the first time in 25 years, according to the International Monetary Fund, which forecasts a 1.8 percent contraction.

Foreign reserves have fallen by more than a third since the end of September 2014 to a more than 10-year low of $24.8bn. The naira has fallen almost 40 percent against the dollar this year.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is trying to spend a record budget of 6.1 trillion naira (R263bn) to stimulate growth.

The country plans to raise about $4.5bn of concessional loans and eurobonds this year. – Bloomberg