Nigerian Trade, Exports and Imports

As we knew already a bit about the culture and other activities of Nigeria I wanted to go into the trade of Nigeria.

I could already expect that oil and natural gas were the most important products for Nigerian trade. To illustrate that fact I wanted to share some figures. Don’t panic, I won’t bore you with that for very long, I just find it very fascinating to know. The country exports approximately 2.327 million barrels per day. You will think the figures aren’t representative as it is from 2007 but after some research, it kind of stayed the same for 2012 as well. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, you should know that Nigeria also has a lot of reserves that is 36.2 barrels of oil! That’s crazy!

Not only Belgium has suffered from the financial crisis but the whole world did, that means Nigeria as well. That’s the reason why the government decided that the export profile had to change. Not only oil and natural gases were sources of export but also minerals and agricultural products became export sources. To make things a bit difficult you have to know that it was under close check of the government. I guess that’s not such of a surprise though!

Concerning  the Nigerian imports, the country’s imports did very well! It grossed over US $42.1 billion. Oil and natural gas aren’t sources of import as well as it was of export. The major imports are machinery, consumer goods, heavy equipment and food products. Most of these imports arrive from the EU: the Netherlands, the UK, France, Germany but also from China, the US and South Korea.

I hope you became a bit wiser about the Nigerian trade now, I know I did!

Talk to you guys later with some new information about the next stop: Niger. Can’t wait!

Sources: 

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113427.pdf

http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/nigeria/export-import.html