Foreign investors eye Nigeria but fear FX scarcity – IMF

Many investors want to come to Nigeria but how to retrieve their investments is still their main concern, an IMF official has said.

The Senior Financial Sector Expert, Debt and Capital Market Instruments Division, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Miriam Tamene, said this during a visit by fund’s team to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Abuja yesterday.

According to her, “At the Annual meetings of IMF, we were pleasantly surprised when we saw many investors interested in the securities market in Nigeria.

“A lot of people think that Nigeria is still an investors’ destination, the main concerns most of them had was the fear that they might not be able to take out their money anytime they want to hence they are being very watchful.”

“Investors are interested in Nigeria, but with difficulties they had in getting their money out recently, that confidence is not there yet. It has improved though, but they are still watching. It is still so much fragile and not what they can take for granted just yet,” she added.

She called on the monetary and regulatory authorities in Nigeria to roll out policies that would bring down the inflation rate in the country as well as increase access to domestic funds to ensure that the economy attains further growth in 2018.

In his remarks, Acting Director General of SEC, Dr. Abdul Zubair, said the future outlook appeared good as several initiatives had already been rolled out by the SEC which will help to grow the capital market and increase investors’ confidence.

He  added that in the long term, more initiatives will be rolled out to ensure that the Nigerian capital market remained one of the best in the world.

The IMF Team was in Nigeria for consultations and to get update on developments concerning all the financial and other key sectors of the Nigerian economy.

The report of their consultations is expected to be presented to the IMF Board in February.