Nigeria Oil Reliance Weighs on ‘Positive’ Bailouts, S&P Says
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Nigeria’s “positive” 2009 bailout of lenders and reduction of nonperforming loans in the banking industry is being outweighed by its dependence on oil and continuing social unrest, according to Standard & Poor’s.
“The banking sector has undergone a significant transformation in the last two years,” Christian Esters, a Frankfurt-based credit analyst at S&P, said in a phone interview yesterday. “What holds the rating down is the remaining political uncertainty, it is also the dependence on the oil sector, prices and the low level of economic development generally.”