IMF retains Nigeria’s GDP growth at 3.4 % after rebasing

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has retained its position on its projection of a 3.4 percent expansion in the country’s real GDP for 2025 despite the change in methodology by the country’s bureau of statistics.

It noted this in its updated World Economic Outlook report titled “Global Economy: Tenuous Resilience amid Persistent Uncertainty,” released today.

Nigeria retained its status as the fourth-largest economy in Africa despite a rebasing exercise that expanded the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced that the economy expanded to N372.8 trillion ($243 billion) in 2024, down from N314.02 trillion in the prior year as more sectors in the informal economy were considered in its calculations.

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Despite the overhaul, Nigeria is yet to reclaim its erstwhile status as the largest economy in Africa.

On July 2, the IMF projected that Nigeria’s economy would grow by 3.4 percent in 2025, up from the 3.0 percent forecast in April 2025.

Global growth is projected at 3.0 percent for 2025 and 3.1 percent in 2026. The forecast for 2025 is 0.2percentage point higher than that in the reference forecast of the April 2025 World Economic Outlook(WEO) and 0.1 percentage point higher for 2026.

“This reflects stronger-than-expected front-loading in anticipation of higher tariffs; lower average effective US tariff rates than announced in April; an improvement in financial conditions, including due to a weaker US dollar; and fiscal expansion in some major jurisdictions,” the report stated.