Macroeconomic Policies and Foreign Capital Inflows in Nigeria

Abstract

The growth of manufacturing sector output in Nigeria is currently sluggish, if not stagnant, despite massive inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as well as macroeconomic policies initiated by successive Nigerian governments. The study investigated how macroeconomic policies and FDI inflows have impacted on the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root test was adopted to determine the stationary properties of the data, and the order of integration of the variables was tested using the Johansen cointegration test. The impact and interactions of macroeconomic policies on the manufacturing sector are less understood and shallow in the extant literature. The government’s macroeconomic policies encourage FDI in the communications and oil sector with a negative impact on the manufacturing sector. This is implicated in inadequate capital investments and technological diffusion. Nonetheless, the study shifts the paradigm in popular arguments that FDI is imperialistic, hence universally exploitative, to a new hypothesis that the failure of the manufacturing sector to tap into FDI and yield desirable growth output is linked to less viable globally competitive macroeconomic policy frameworks in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that the Nigerian government should review its macroeconomic policies, particularly the monetary and exchange rate, and draw up proactive human capital development plans that can directly contribute to the development of the productive capacity of the country’s population.