Nigeria economy to grow at 2-3% on back of election spending says Kale
The Statistician General, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Mr. Yemi Kale, has predicted the growth rate for Nigeria in 2018 at 2-3 percent, arising from increased spending by the government as election draws near.
Kale noted that trade balance would come under pressure following growing uncertainty as the country approaches 2019 which might keep growth and recovery muted.
“We anticipate full year growth of 0.8-1.0 percent in 2017 and 2-3 percent in 2018 encouraged by election spending”, Kale said at the BusinessDay Economic Outlook for 2018 in Lagos at the weekend.
According to him, the Nigerian economy has been faced by a lengthy collapse in oil prices that began in mid 2014 and snowballed into a two-decade low of $28 per barrel in January 2016.
He added that the pain inflicted by militant attacks in the Niger-Delta sent production levels to near decade-lows of 1.2 million barrels, and even dealt a stiffer blow on the oil-dependent economy.
In his words:“These factors pushed the economy into its first full-year contraction in 25 years and triggered acute dollar shortages that stifled the non-oil sector, as the latter contracted 0.2 percent to record its worst performance since 1984.”
Kale, however, stressed that the economy managed to limp off recession in the second quarter of 2017 after expanding 0.55 percent, on the back of a rebound in oil prices, following an agreement reached by OPEC members in 2016 to shave some 1.2mbpd off the market to nip a growth supply glut in the bud and relax hostilities in the Niger Delta.
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