Economic downturn: IMF lowers Nigeria’s growth to 2.9% from 3.3%, gives reasons

 

Maureen Aguta

 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), has published its World Economic Outlook (WEO) for 2024.

The report crashed Nigeria’s growth projection to 2.9 per cent.

“Nigeria’s growth prospects for 2024 dropped to 2.9 per cent from 3.3 per cent projected for 2023”

According to the IMF, the development is blamed on issues such as inflation, flooding and issues with oil production.

While Nigeria’s economic growth has been said to be expected to drop, global economic growth is expected to remain unchanged at 3.2 per cent, although there was a decline of 0.1 per cent.

Despite the surging inflation rocking the country currently, the International Monetary Fund stated that Nigeria is expected to steady its inflation at 25 per cent in 2025 and 14 per cent by 2029.

“Nigeria’s economy in the first and second quarter of the year grew by 2.98 per cent and 3.19 per cent respectively amid a surge in inflation and further depreciation of the Naira.”

“The GDP growth rate in the first two quarters of 2024 surpassed the figure for 2023, representing resilience despite severe macroeconomic shocks with a spike in petrol prices and a 28-year high inflation rate.

“Nigeria’s inflation rate only began to slow down in July 2024 after 19 months of consistent increase dating back to January 2023

“However, after two months of slowdown hiatus, inflation continued to rise on the back of an increase in petrol prices by the NNPCL in September,” the report said.

This projection comes amid economic challenges faced by Nigeria. Nigeria faces challenges bothering on issues such as inflation, food inflation and rising energy costs.