The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said Nigeria will be out of the recession soon.
Over the weekend, Nigeria slid into its worst economic
recession in over three decades. Gross domestic product (GDP) numbers released
by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday, November 21, indicates the
nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020,
causing it to slide into another recession. Read here.
While speaking at the ongoing 26th Nigerian Economic Summit
organized by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the Federal Ministry of
Finance, Budget, and National Planning, on Monday, November 23, the Minister of
Finance said the country would emerge from the recession in the fourth quarter
of 2020 or by the first quarter of 2021.
She blamed the recession on the global Coronavirus pandemic
which has forced other economies in other countries into recession. Ahmed said
other countries also in recession, including the United Kingdom, the United States,
South Africa, and many others.
“Let me remind us that before the impact of 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.
Nigeria is not alone in this, but I will say that Nigeria
has outperformed all of these economies in terms of the record of a negative
growth.
While the economy has entered into recession in the third
quarter, the trend of the growth suggests that this will be a short-lived
recession, and indeed by the fourth or, at worst, the first quarter of 2021,
the country will exit recession.
Our expectation of a quick exit, which will be historically
fast, is anchored on the several complementary fiscal, real sector and monetary
interventions that have been proactively introduced by government to forestall
a far worse decline of the economy and alleviate the negative consequences of
the pandemic.” she said
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