Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) climbed 1.93 percent in 2018 compared to 0.8 percent in 2017, state-funded data agency, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.
Here are six things we learnt from the NBS report.
Q4 growth rises at fastest pace since 2015
Economic growth in the fourth quarter came in stronger than expected at 2.38 percent in real terms, the fastest expansion rate since the third quarter of 2015.
The economy expanded 1.95 percent in the first quarter, 1.50 percent in Q2 and 1.81 percent in the third quarter.
Another year of negative per-capita GDP
The economy continued to underperform birth rate in 2018 for the third straight year.
Growth of 1.9 percent falls below the country’s annual population growth rate of about 2.6 percent.
That implies that Nigerians are growing poorer. Average incomes have now contracted every year since 2016.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who assumed office in 2015 and seeks a re-election at the Feb. 16 polls, promised to fight poverty and create jobs, a fight he is losing in the world’s latest poverty capital.
Not fast enough to deal with unemployment
Nigeria’s GDP is slowly picking up since the oil price crash of 2014, but not fast enough to deal with rising unemployment rate, which the NBS reported hit a near decade-high of 23 percent in the third quarter of 2018.
Bad year for agriculture
2018 was a bad year for agriculture overall, despite the current government’s effort to boost agriculture output and diversify the economy.
The sector was growing at between 3 to 4.5 percent in 2016 and 2017, but was more like 1-2.5 percent in most of 2018.
Full year agriculture slowed from 4.2 percent to 2.5 percent.
Bright spots
The non-oil sector expanded 2 percent in 2018 from 0.5 in 2017, in what some analysts describe as the first true sign of a broader economic recovery.
Services drove half of growth, industry a fifth and agriculture a quarter.
Within services, communication put in a good performance, as it has now been up 12 percent in the last three quarters.
Policy choices crucial for next four years- Rencap
“We think Nigeria will do better in the next four years, because oil prices won’t repeat the fall of 2014 – 2016,” said Charles Robertson, the chief economist at Renaissance Capital.
“But policy choices will determine how much better Nigeria does,” Robertson added.
