- Mobile money transactions record N2.55trn in February- NIBSS
As the National Bureau of Statistics released Nigeria’s headline inflation on Monday, the stock market continued its downward trajectory, with share prices continuing to decline amidst prevailing bearish market sentiment.
The All-Share Index experienced a 53 basis points decline, settling at 101,777.12 points, resulting in a year-to-date return of 36.11 percent.
Concurrently, the market capitalization of listed equities depreciated by 0.53 percent to close at N57.56 trillion, reflecting a total market loss of N303.95 billion.
Losses in Tier-1 banking tickers, GTCO (-7.73%), FBNH (-1.29%) and ZENITHBANK (-3.38%) were the drivers of the drag in the market.
As a result, the year-to-date (YTD) return slipped to 36.11 percent, while the market capitalization shed N303.95 billion to close at N57.56 trillion.
Market activity witnessed a significant downturn, with total deals, volume, and value declining by 13.72 percent, 55.50 percent, and 66.79 percent, respectively, totaling 10,777 trades, 326.64 million units, and N7.17 billion.
Sell-off pressure was evident across sectors, particularly in Banking, Insurance, Consumer, and Industrial Goods indexes, which declined by 3.83 percent, 0.51 percent, 0.01 percent, and 0.01 percent, respectively.
However, the Oil/Gas sector maintained stability from the previous session. At session close, UBA emerged as the most traded security in terms of volume, transacting 42.25 million units across 708 trades, while MTNN led in traded value at N1.17 billion.
On the flipside, investment recorded an upbeat in the money market. NIBOR rates advanced across all tenor gauges, indicating a shortage of liquidity in the system.
The Overnight, 1- month, 3-month and 6-month NIBOR rose to 29.90 percent, 23.40 percent, 24.40 percent, and 25.05 percent, respectively.
Prominent money market rates like the open repo rate (OPR) and overnight lending rate (OVN) concluded at 29.50 percent and 30.38 percent, respectively.
In the Nigerian Interbank Treasury Bills market, the Nigerian Interbank Treasury Bills True Yield (NITTY) exhibited a mixed trend across various maturities.
Rates for the 1-month and 6-month periods increased by 0.62 percent and 0.16 percent, respectively, while rates for the 3-month and 12-month periods decreased by 0.19 percent and 0.36 percent, respectively.
However, the secondary market for Nigerian Treasury Bills experienced positive trading activity, leading to a decline in the average yield by 0.10 percent to close at 17.47 percent. Bond Market In the secondary market for FGN Bonds, the average yield inched higher by 0.03 percent to close at 19.29 percent on Monday.
In Nigeria’s sovereign Eurobonds market, trading activity exhibited a bearish trend, resulting in a rise in the average yield by 0.12% to reach 9.86 percent.
In the foreign exchange market, The Naira strengthened by 0.55 percent in the official market, ending at N1, 136.04 per dollar. In the Parallel market, the Naira closed at N1, 080 to the dollar.
Nigeria’s inflation kept climbing in March, reaching a 28-year high of 33.20% in annual terms, driven by soaring food and energy costs despite Central Bank of Nigeria’s rate hikes aimed at halting its ascent.
The National Bureau of Statistics disclosed that the country’s headline inflation rate increased to 33.20 per cent in March 2024, up from 31.70 per cent in February 2024.
This represents a month-over-month increase of 1.50 per cent points in the headline inflation rate, according to recently released data by the NBS.
Year-over-year data shows a significant 11.16 per cent point rise in the headline inflation rate from March 2023, which was at 22.04 per cent.
This indicates a significant increase in the headline inflation rate for March 2024 compared to the same month in the previous year.
In addition, the month-on-month headline inflation rate for March 2024 was 3.02 per cent, which is 0.10 per cent lower than the rate recorded in February 2024.
This suggests that the pace of the average price level increase in March 2024 was slower than the preceding month.
For the year ending in March 2024, the average Consumer Price Index increased by 27.13 per cent compared to the previous year, which was a rise of 6.76 per cent from the 20.37 per cent increase observed in March 2023.
The urban inflation rate in March 2024 reached 35.18 per cent, which was 12.11 per cent points higher than the 23.07 per cent rate from March 2023. Comparing month-to-month, urban inflation decreased slightly to 3.17 per cent in March 2024, down by 0.0001 percentage points from February 2024. The twelve-month average urban inflation rate as of March 2024 was 28.96 per cent, which was 7.96 percentage points higher than the 21.00 reported in March 2023.
Year-on-year, rural inflation stood at 31.45 per cent in March 2024, which was 10.37 per cent points higher than 21.09 from March 2023. On a month-to-month basis, rural inflation decreased to 2.87 per cent in March 2024, which was a 0.20 percentage point drop from February 2024. The average rural inflation rate for the twelve months ending in March 2024 was 25.50 per cent, up by 5.71 per cent points from 19.79 per cent in March 2023.
The annual food inflation rate was 40.01 per cent in March 2024, which was 15.56 percentages higher than the 24.45 per cent rate in March 2023.
The NBS attributed this increase to price hikes in items such as Garri, Millet, Akpu Uncooked Fermented (Bread and Cereals), Yam Tuber, Water Yam (Potatoes, Yam, and other Tubers), Dried Fish Sardine, Mudfish Dried (Fish), Palm Oil, Vegetable Oil (Oil and Fat), Beef Feet, Beef Head, Liver (Meat), Coconut, Water Melon (Fruit), Lipton Tea, Bournvita, Milo (Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa).
Month-to-month, food inflation fell to 3.62 per cent in March 2024, which was a 0.17 percentage point decrease from February 2024. This decline was due to reduced price growth rates for items like Guinea corn flour, Plantain Flour (Bread and Cereals), Yam, Irish Potato, Coco Yam (Potatoes, Yam & Other Tubers), Titus fish, Mudfish Dried (Fish), Lipton, Bournvita, Ovaltine (Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa).
The average annual food inflation rate for the year ending in March 2024 was 31.40 per cent, which was an 8.69 percentage point increase from the 22.72 per cent rate in March 2023.
In March 2024, the core inflation rate, which was calculated by excluding volatile agricultural products and energy prices, reached 25.90 per cent on an annual basis. This represents a significant increase of 6.26 per cent from the 19.63 per cent rate recorded in March 2023. Notable price hikes were observed in urban bus fares, housing rentals, medical consultation fees, and pharmaceuticals, among others.
On a monthly comparison, Core Inflation rose to 2.54 per cent in March 2024, up from 2.17 per cent in February 2024, marking an increase of 0.37 per cent. The average annual inflation rate over the past twelve months culminated at 22.26 per cent as of March 2024, which was 5.04 per cent points higher than the rate seen in March 2023.
NBS noted that it is important to recognise that varying consumption patterns across different states and localities influence the Consumer Price Index.
Mobile money transactions record N2.55trn in February- NIBSS
In the interim, the value of mobile money transactions in February rose to N2.55 trillion from N2.37 trillion in January, according to data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System.
NIBSS disclosed that the total value of electronic payment transactions in 2023 stood at N600 trillion.
Data from NIBSS showed that the volume of mobile money transactions for the month of February rose by 70 per cent to 183.69 million compared to 108.13 million recorded in the month of January.
The latest data released by NIBSS showed that while the volume of transactions rose by 70 percent, the value of transactions rose by 7.8 percent.
“Volume had risen from 108.13 million transactions with a value of N2.37 trillion in January, to 183.69 million transactions with a value of N2.55 trillion,” NIBSS said.
The data suggested that more Nigerians used electronic channels such as bank applications and USSD to pay for items that normally would have been cash-based.
The data showed that while the volume of NIBSS Instant Payment rose by 45.5 per cent last month, the value of transactions consummated via the channel declined by 5.12 percent.
The February NIP data showed that as against 541.65 million transactions that were done via NIP in January, valued at N38.77 trillion, the February NIP channel recorded 787.93 million transactions with a value of N36.78 trillion.
When compared to the data recorded in the comparable period of 2022, the NIP recorded a significant increase in volume, which was up by 121 per cent, while value rose by 35.32 per cent. In February last year, NIP transactions stood at 355.61 million transactions valued at N27.18 billion.
Similarly, transactions consummated via point of sale (PoS) terminals rose last month. According to the NIBSS statistics, the volume of PoS transactions rose by 17.8 per cent while value of transactions on the channel rose by 9.4 percent.
At the end of February, a total of 113.53 million valued at N883.45 billion was recorded, as against the 96.35 million transactions valued at 807.16 billion that was recorded in January this year.
Also, the PoS channels’ figure for February this year, showed a 27.7 and 53.6 per cent increase in the value and value of transactions compared to the comparable period of 2022. In February last year, the channel had recorded 88.9 million transactions valued at N575.96 billion.
The increased volume in transactions was not unconnected to the scarcity of cash in the economy which forced many citizens to resort to using electronic payment channels to pay for their daily transactions.
