An economist, Bismarck Rewane, has identified certain economic sectors that have promises or lack of it for Nigerian marketing communication industry.
He said various government protectionist strategies would incentivize increased domestic production and sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and ICT will likely benefit immensely.
For FMCG, he said the sector benefitted from the government’s protectionist strategies and there will likely be increased activities partly due to the border closure.
Based on this, Rewane foresees domestic productivity would most likely increase and this will likely lead to increase spending on advertisement, branding, promotions, advocacy and public relations consultation.
As at Q3, last year, the FMCG sector was growing at 1.1% with contribution to GDP at 8.74% (Q3’19).
The Trading sector, he said contracted by -1.45% in Q3’19 and it was first victim of border closure. The sector also suffered 43 banned items with Foreign exchange restrictions. Also exchange rate for converting import duty increased to N326/$
According to him, the new minimum wage will likely boost aggregate demand but the increase in tariffs is expected to lead to reductions in traders revenue.
The economist who spoke on ‘The Nigerian Economy in 2020: Implications for the Marketing Communications Sector ‘ recently in Lagos at Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria, PRCAN forum said delay in the re-opening of the land borders will remain a major threat to trading activities.
He therefore warned that Trade sector’s impact will likely be neutral on demand for PR services.
For telecommunication sector, he foresees increased spending on PR services owing to the structure of the market. The telecommunication sector he said has growing customer sophistication and there are huge opportunities untapped in the roll-out of broadband networks and digital services.
In 2020, he also foresees increased advertisement and branding by domestic companies to differentiate products.
He said Banking sector vulnerabilities will persist and CBN will be more proactive in managing financial system risks.
He challenged PR practitioners who are working for companies to brace up for the challenges ahead to explain in clear terms and language the impact of border closure, cashless policy, VAT, rising inflation which erodes consumer purchasing power, government borrowing and other government actions on the cautious consumer.
Speaking earlier, the President of PRCAN, Israel Opayemi who is the CEO of Chain Reactions said Public Relations is all about analysing trends and predicting their consequences.
Daniel Obi
