Business Confidence Improves in Nov-18

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From the lens of the 1,050 businesses surveyed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in its monthly Business Expectation Survey (BES) for Nov-18, the broader economy is on track for further recovery. The survey which recorded a 98.3% response rate, attempts to harvest the opinions of business enterprises across different spheres of the real sector.

Having cheeringly signalled optimism on macroeconomic outcomes for the rest of the year, a glimpse at the trajectory of highlighted business constraints since the Sept-18 publication underscores that unfavourable political climate, high-interest rates and labour problems have consistently been pencilled in with additional points. The issue of unfavourable political climate is unsurprising consideringthe slow pace of reform implementation in Nigeria, as well as political tensions – being a pre-election year. Also, average prime and maximum lending rates have shown signs of an uptick as culled from the CBN’s Oct-18 economic report. Yet, the
percentage of businesses with plans for expansions rose across the board.

The optimism expressed is in line with our expectation for further but sluggish growth in the broader economy, even as we keep our fingers crossed on the grand arrival of Q3-18 GDP numbers next week.