Those bogus statistics are becoming bare. Yes, “Diaspora remittances to Nigeria witnessed a huge decline in H1 2023, according to the latest International Payment data released by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Compared to the $10.11 billion recorded in the same period last year, the decline has dealt a massive blow to Nigeria’s hope to boost its forex liquidity with Diaspora remittances.”
(The data quoted here seems not correct since Nigeria received about $20 billion remittances in 2022)
Add that to the bogus petrol consumption (has since dropped by more than 37%), you will see that Nigeria has a deep problem: guesswork policymaking. Most of those “diaspora remittances” were round-tripped hard currency which agents of “the connected” were bringing back to the nation, at black market rate, after buying them at the original rate.
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With the official and the parallel market rates getting to parity, that round-tripping will fade. But do not rejoice: they will invent another trick since nothing is punished in the nation.
As I noted in Tekedia Investment class on Saturday, the optimism in the banking stocks in the Nigerian stock exchange is not due to any fundamental redesign on what banks are doing, rather, people are buying into massive dividends which we expect to happen as banks reclassify foreign currency denominated assets, creating ephemeral > 40% profit overnight (it used to be N415/$, now you can use N700). My thesis was that diasporas were not wiring money to buy equities (and CBN data just confirmed that, since we dropped from $10b to now $1b).
Until Nigeria begins to punish the connected who mess up the economy, nothing will change.
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