The Federal Government on Monday said Nigeria will move out of recession either in the fourth quarter of this year or in the first quarter of 2021. The government said the nation’s second recession in five years would be short-lived. Zainab Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning disclosed this on Monday at the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group in Abuja, Nigeria. According to her, said the recession was caused by COVID-19 which ravaged the entire world, saying that many other countries were also forced into recession because of the virus.
She said before COVID-19, the Nigerian economy was experiencing sustained growth, which had been improving quarter by quarter until the second quarter of 2020, when the impact of the COVID-19 was felt, The minister stated that Nigeria is not alone in this, but noted that the nation had outperformed economies like the United Kingdom and others who went into recesson in terms of the record of a negative growth. She explained that while the economy has entered into recession in the third quarter, the trend of the growth suggested that this would be a short-lived recession, “and indeed by the fourth or, at worst, the first quarter of 2021, the country will exit recession.”
The National Bureau of Statistics, NBS had two days ago said that Nigeria’s economy has slipped into another recession, the second time since 2016. According to NBS, the economy shrank again in the third quarter, just like it did in the second quarter. The nation’s economy posted a second consecutive negative growth, contracting by 3.62 per cent in the third quarter. The cumulative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first nine months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 per cent. It recorded a -6.10 per cent negative growth in the second quarter.
“Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) recorded a growth rate of –3.62% (year-on-year) in real terms in the third quarter of 2020. “Cumulatively, the economy has contracted by -2.48%. While this represents an improvement of 2.48% points over the –6.10% growth rate recorded in the preceding quarter (Q2 2020), it also indicates that two consecutive quarters of negative growth have been recorded in 2020.
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