Aggregate foreign capital inflow in to the country increased by 24.3% to $4.94 billion at the end of fourth quarter 2013 from $3.97 billion in recorded in preceding quarter.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) external sector development report posted on its website said that the surge in foreign capital inflow was due to an increase in both direct and portfolio investment inflows.
The CBN said that direct investment and portfolio investment inflows increased by 16.1 and 26.6% respectively from $0.86 billion and $3.11 billion recorded in third quarter of 2013 to $1.00 billion and $3.94 billion at the end of December last year.
It however said that portfolio investment inflow remained dominant and accounted for 79.7% of total foreign inflows while direct investment inflows accounted for 20.3% of the total.
The CBN said that the higher inflow of foreign capital in fourth quarter 2013 was a welcome development which should be sustained through macroeconomic stability and enhanced investment environment including good corporate governance.
The available data from CBN showed that total foreign exchange inflows to the economy in fourth quarter stood at $35.34 billion as against $38.49 billion recorded in the preceding quarter, indicating a decrease of 8.2%.
Inflows through the Central Bank decreased by 20.2% from $11.86 billion in achieved in third quarter to $9.47 billion in fourth quarter while inflows through autonomous sources declined by 2.9% to $25.88 billion.
Similarly, outflows within the period under review decreased, by 13.1% to $11.22 billion as against $12.91 billion in recorded in the preceding quarter.
Consequently, it said that a lower net inflow of $24.12 billion was recorded at end of fourth quarter compared with $25.59 billion in the previous quarter, indicating a decline of 5.7%.
The report further said that the holdings of external reserves indicated that the share of the CBN holdings in the total stock of reserves stood at 86.2% while that of the Federation and Federal Government were 7.7 and 6.1%, respectively.
The US dollar holding of foreign reserves according to the report constituted 83.9% at $35.94 billion in the review period. Other currencies in the basket and their shares include Euro US $2.53 billion or 5.9%, SDR units $2.58 billion 6.0%, Chinese Yuan $0.90 billion 2.1%, and GB Pounds $0.89 billion 2.1%.
The report stated that the external debt sustainability index, computed as the ratio of external debt to nominal GDP remained at 0.1 while the public sector external debt rose from $8.26 billion in the preceding quarter to $8.82 billion in the review period while public sector debt service payments increased from $0.10 million in third quarter 2013 to $0.30 billion at end of December last year.
