Nigeria to import $100m palm oil from Malaysia

To meet expanding local demand, Nigeria will spend up to $100 million on the importation of palm oil in 2023, going by available data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The figure is based on the value of the imported commodity in the past two years at the average cost of N25 billion in six months, or N50 billion per year. In its quarterly ‘Foreign Trade in Statistics’ reports, the NBS showed that imported (crude) palm oil, which falls under agricultural products, originated from the Asian countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, China, India and West Africa Cote d’Ivoire. Nigeria imported palm oil to the tune of N28.16 billion in the first six months of 2022, as the value of agricultural commodities shipped into the country maintained an upward trend. Palm oil falls under the nation’s foreign exchange restrictions; it is among the 43 import items banned by the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) for Forex Exchange. This implies that importers sourced their foreign ...