Energy Briefs
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THE Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has said that oil and gas, and power firms in the country owe banks more than N3.931 trillion as at the end of December 2015. According to latest data released by).
CBN in its Quarterly Statistical Bulletin for the Fourth Quarter of 2015, said the indebtedness represented a decline of 1.36 percent or N54 billion against N3.985 trillion recorded at the end of November 2015.
A breakdown of the commercial banks’ sectoral credit allocation showed that the downstream, natural gas and crude oil refining segments owed banks up to N2.273 trillion as at year end. This was slightly higher than the N2.264 trillion recorded in November, while the upstream and oil and gas services sector owed N1.156 trillion against N1.192 trillion month on month.
In the power sector, the banks are owed N340.31 billion by Independent Power Plants, IPPs, and power generation companies, while power transmission and distribution companies owed N162.44 billion against N168.1 billion in the corresponding period. As a result, the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reported that exposure of the banking sector to energy firms as at year end, increased by 10.02 percent or N358 billion in comparison to end-November’s N3.573 trillion.
The report stated that total loans and advances to the domestic economy during the period stood at N12.263 trillion, down by N15.7 billion or 0.1 percent below the level recorded in the preceding month, but an increase of N86.8 billion or 0.7 percent above year end 2014.
The report said, “Sectoral analysis of credit to private sector revealed that the service sector gulped 44.6 percent, the industry sector had 33.3 percent and other sectors secured the remaining fraction of the credit to private sector with agricultural sector obtaining the least, 3.4 percent.
“Further analysis of the credit to industry sector showed that oil and gas; manufacturing; power and energy; and mining and quarrying sub-sectors received 52.1, 39.8, 7.8 and 0.3 percent, respectively. Furthermore, a breakdown of total credit to service sector revealed that other sub-sectors; oil & gas; finance; insurance and capital market; real estate; power and energy and education had 50.7, 19.8, 13.6, 11.9, 2.8 and 1.3 percent, respectively.”
Despite the huge credit allocation to the energy sector, the CBN report highlighted that at N811.82 billion, gross oil revenue fell by N118.65 billion or 12.75 percent and N635.42 billion or 43.91 percent respectively, in comparison to third quarter of 2015 and fourth quarter 2014 respectively.
Specifically, oil accounted for 57.56 percent of the gross revenue during the quarter under review, while of 42.44 percent was attributed to non-oil source. The report added that gross oil revenue was 59.79 percent of the budgetary target of N1.358 trillion.
— May 16, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
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