CitiBank Nigeria shines as foreign capital inflow to banking industry drops to $832m

ALTHOUGH Citibank stamped its foot as the bank with the most significant inflow of foreign capital in the in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2023, an evaluation of the Q4 2023 capital importation (CI) report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that the banking sector received lower CI.

The sector received about $832.64 million in foreign capital flow into Nigeria in 2023, which was about 60.0 percent lower than the inflow in 2022.

The bank with the most significant inflow of foreign capital in the year under review was CitiBank Nigeria Limited at $1.03 billion, followed by Stanbic IBTC Bank at $919.32 million and First Bank of Nigeria, which received $447.69 million.

Despite its poor performance in 2023 compared to the previous year, the banking sector had been one of the largest recipients of foreign capital.

The report further showed that no less than 59.1 percent of capital importation into the country in 2023, amounting to $2.31 billion, was foreign loans.

According to the report, foreign capital inflow rose from $654.65 million in Q3 2023 to $1.09 billion in the final quarter of the year.

Although Nigeria recorded a total foreign investment of $3.91 billion in 2023, a breakdown showed that the country got $433.87 million in Q1, $771.53 million in Q2, $507.71 million in Q3 and $594.75 million in Q4 as foreign loans and the same amount borrowed in 2022.

Further analysis indicated that the value of foreign loans received by the country in Q3 2023 was 18 percent lower compared to the $619.16 million recorded in the same quarter of the previous year.

Moreover, there was a 34.19 percent decline relative to the $771.53 million secured in Q2 2023. This decrease was attributed to the current government’s preference for domestic borrowing.