Afrigather Nestle Plc, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc and Dangote Cement Plc are the highest listed consumer firms that reported the best Overseas Change loss final yr, in keeping with knowledge compiled by BusinessDay.
The rest are Nigerian Breweries Plc, Worldwide Breweries Plc, BUA Cement Plc, Cadbury Nigeria Plc and Lafarge Africa Plc.
Evaluation of the companies’ monetary statements from the Nigerian Change Restricted reveals that Nestle’s FX loss rose to N195.07 billion in 2023 from N8.45 billion in 2022.
Learn additionally: FX Losses: Unmasking the vulnerable sectors
Dangote Sugar’s FX loss totalled N172.2 billion, up from N1.89 billion, Dangote Cement recorded N164.08 billion, up from N53.93 billion; Nigeria Breweries recorded N153.33 billion, up from N26.34 billion.
Worldwide Breweries rose to N72.42 billion from N13.46 billion; BUA Cement recorded N69.95 billion, up from N5.5 billion.
Additional evaluation of statements revealed that their whole FX loss was N885.0 billion, up from N122.7 billion in 2022.
“The FX loss widening is because of the impact of the naira depreciation. These firms had overseas currency-denominated obligations of their books,” Israel Odubola, a Lagos-based analysis economist, mentioned.
He added that with the large depreciation of the naira, over 40 p.c in 2023, the naira equal of their overseas currency-denominated obligations widened.
PZ Cussons reported an FX lack of N87.1 billion for the six months ended November, up from N2.7 billion in 2022.
Guinness had a lack of N15.7 billion for the six months ended December, up from N4.53 billion in the identical interval of 2022.
“The devaluation was huge as we moved from about N450/$ on the official price to virtually N1,600/$,” Muda Yusuf, chief govt officer of the Centre for Promotion of Non-public Enterprises, mentioned.
He mentioned a lot of the shopper companies have publicity by way of their overseas liabilities that they used to get their uncooked supplies, services or all kinds of issues from their mum or dad firms.
Final June, the Central Financial institution of Nigeria merged all segments of the FX market into the Traders and Exporters window and reintroduced the prepared purchaser, prepared vendor mannequin.
The liberalisation of the overseas trade regime weakened the naira from 463.38/$ to 1,602/$ as of March 5, 2024. On the parallel market, the naira depreciated to 1,590/$ from 762/$.
The rise in petrol costs and overseas trade prices contributed to the surge within the nation’s headline inflation price, which rose to 29.90 p.c in January from 28.92 p.c within the earlier month, in keeping with the Nationwide Bureau of Statistics.
The powerful enterprise surroundings additionally pushed multinationals to exit Africa’s greatest economic system as Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline Shopper Nigeria, Equinor, Sanofi and Bolt Meals introduced plans to depart the nation this yr.
