Research and Analytics
Research and Analytics
In Q4-2022, Nigeria’s external position improved, as the current account returned to a surplus position, primarily propelled by a higher trade balance surplus and reduced shortfalls in the services and primary income accounts. Specifically, the current account balance attained a surplus of $2.3 billion, a significant turnaround from the $2.1 billion deficit recorded in Q3-2022.
The Evergrande story is bigger than just one company. It’s about China’s unsustainable model of economic growth, which has relied on endless investment and a mad, debt-fueled development frenzy in recent years. That model helped China soar, but the country is now experiencing some turbulence. Last week, some alarmist observers were calling this China’s “Lehman moment” — a reference to the collapse of Lehman Brothers that preceded the 2008 financial crisis — but China-focused economists argue that’s overblown.
By looking beyond commodities, the research shows that economy-wide policies such as governance and education help foster diverse exports more than narrowly targeted industrial policies, a finding that can better guide nations aiming to expand their international trade.
The examination of 201 countries and territories goes beyond the economic complexity indices that have traditionally been used by economists. Those proxies for the productive capability of a given economic system have strong sensitivity to commodities, which can distort their accuracy.
Asia alone has roughly two billion internet users, with considerable room to grow. Asia’s advanced and emerging market economies have several locally headquartered tech giants—including Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, Rakuten—and host foreign tech giants such as Facebook. A new set of agreed global tax reforms will change where these tech giants and other global giants pay taxes.
2020 was a year of extremes. Travel all but ceased for a period. Oil prices wildly fluctuated. Trade in medical products reached new heights. Household spending shifted to consumer goods rather than services and savings ballooned as people stayed home amid a global shutdown.
In our latest External Sector Report we found that the global reaction to the pandemic further widened global current account balances—the sum of absolute deficits and surpluses among all countries—from 2.8 percent of world GDP in 2019 to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2020. Those balances are set to widen further as the pandemic continues to rage in much of the world.
A new IMF External Sector Report shows that overall current account deficits and surpluses in 2019 were just below 3 percent of world GDP, slightly less than a year earlier. The latest forecasts for 2020 imply only a further narrowing by some 0.3 percent of world GDP, a more modest decline than after the global financial crisis 10 years ago.
Five years ago, 5 naira and 10 naira currency were a significant part of our national denomination, and you could walk into any shop and get sweets, biscuits for that amount. This same 5 and 10 naira are becoming hard to come by, with little or no purchasing power. Coins have gone into extinction, confined to the books of accounts only, telling us the currency keeps losing its value with the passage of time.
Most trade takes place by sea, and—for navigational safety purposes—virtually all cargo ships report their position, speed, and other information many times a day. A new IMF methodology using these data can help better inform us how international trade is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
An Introduction Though started on December 30 2019 when Dr. Li Wenliang dropped bombshell in his medical school alumni group on WeChat about the kind of illness he had seen from seven patients, the coronavirus was officially recognized by the Chinese scientists on January 7, 2020. According to NYTimes, the virus has sickened more than […]
![[INFOGRAPHICS] Sectoral Contribution to the 2019 GDP](https://giftedanalysts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Kaduna-Refinary-03-scaled.jpg)
