Nigeria Records Highest Quarterly GDP Growth Since 2016 Recession

Nigeria’s gross domestic product grew by 2.27% in 2019, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics has shown.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had projected that the nation’s economy would grow by 2.1% in 2019.

But the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) recorded a growth of 2.55 per cent (year-on-year) in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2019, the highest since the recession in 2016.

This was revealed in the latest report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) .

The figure shows an increase of 0.17 per cent points compared to the fourth quarter of 2018 which recorded a growth rate of 2.38 per cent.

According to the data agency, the GDP growth also represents an increase of 0.27 per cent points when compared with the third quarter of the year under review.

“The strong fourth quarter 2019 growth rate also represented the highest quarterly growth performance since the 2016 recession.

“Overall, this resulted in annual 2019 real growth rate of 2.27%, compared to 1.91% in 2018. Quarter on quarter, real GDP growth was 5.59%,” the report stated.

In the last quarter of 2019, the NBS said the nation’s aggregate GDP stood at N39,577,340.04 million in nominal terms.

It explained that this was higher than the fourth quarter of 2018 which recorded an aggregate of N35,230,607.63 million, representing year on year nominal growth rate of 12.34 per cent.

The agency stressed that the rate was –0.31 per points lower relative to the rate recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018, and –0.96 per cent points lower than the rate recorded in the preceding quarter.