BREAKING! Nigerian economy grows 1.87% in Q1 2020 – NBS

Nigerian economy was down 0.72% when compared to Q4 2019

Nigerian economy grew 1.87 per cent in the first three months of 2020 from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS said on Monday.

But the expansion is however smaller when compared to the last quarter of 2019 when the economy grew by 2.55 per cent.

It is also the slowest quarterly growth rate in one-and-a-half years, and comes as Africa’s largest economy battles coronavirus pandemic, while still on the path to recovering from the 2016 economic recession.

The slowdown reflects “the earliest effects of the disruption” from the global outbreak, said NBS, and comes as the government expects the Nigeran economy to contract this year as much as 8.9% in a worst-case scenario.

“In the quarter under review, aggregate GDP stood at N35,647,406.08 million in nominal terms. This performance was higher when compared to the first quarter of 2019 which recorded N31,824,349.67 million, with a nominal growth rate of 12.01% year on year,” NBS said.

Also, read RECESSION: Nigerian economy could contract by 8.9% – Finance Minister

It added: “Relative to the first quarter of 2019, the nominal growth rate was higher by 0.11% points but lower than the proceeding quarter by –0.32% points. For better clarity, the Nigerian economy has been classified broadly into the oil and non-oil sectors.”

Nigeria’s crude production was 2.07 million barrels a day, NBS said, the country’s highest level in more than four years.

But a global oil price crash due to reduced demand from the pandemic threatens to offset those gains, with annual growth in the oil sector contracting 1.3 per cent from the previous quarter to 5.06 per cent.

The non-oil sector was also hit growing by just 1.55 per cent, which was down 0.72 per cent from the last three months of 2019, the statistics office said.

The World Bank expects the coming recession to be “much more pronounced” than in 2016 and potentially Nigeria’s worst financial crisis in four decades.

You can download the full report here.