Nigeria’s Economy Inches Closer to Recession As GDP Falls by 6.10%

Nigeria’s economy has taken a bad hit as its Gross Domestic Product fell by 6.10 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday, August 24.

The last time the country’s economy shrank like this was more than three years ago.

According to the Gross Domestic Product Report for Q2, the inefficiencies in the domestic and international economic activity during the quarter under review caused the decline.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic had put the world economy in limbo for about 5 months, with the impact of this inevitable recess now emerging as countries around the world ease the Covid-19 lockdown.

The NBS report compared the latest figure with Q2 2019, which recorded a growth of 2.12 per cent. This means that Q2 2020 dropped by 8.22 per cent, and a fall of 7.97 per cent when compared to the first quarter of 2020 which recorded 1.87 per cent.

“Consequently, for the first half of 2020, real GDP declined by –2.18 per cent year on year, compared with 2.11 per cent recorded in the first half of 2019. Quarter on quarter, real GDP decreased by –5.04 per cent. Furthermore, only 13 activities recorded positive real growth compared to 30 in the preceding quarter,” the NBS reported.

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Experts have said that Nigeria’s economy would fall into its second recession in four years if the Q3 2020 is negative.

In the second quarter of 2017, the Nigerian economy came out of its first recession in 25 years, and it had been recovering, albeit slowly, since then.