Nigeria: Minute rise in GDP of 2.01 pct in Q1 after oil sector drops

According to a report released by Nigeria’s capital Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s economy slowed in the first quarter after the oil sector shrank.

The recorded production of 2.4 million barrels of oil per day in 2014 made Nigeria the largest oil producer in Africa and further ranked it the 13^th-largest oil producer over the planet. But due to the current steep decline in oil production, the country’s gross domestic product expanded by only 2.01 percent in the first quarter.

The annual pace dropped from the previous quarter’s 2.38 percent, when activity was likely to have been boosted by state spending in the run-up to February and March elections in which President Muhammadu Buhari won a second term. Nigeria’s central bank has forecast growth of 3 percent for 2019.

The largely crude-dependent economy emerged from recession in 2017 and has been recovering in great part due to higher oil prices, as reported by Reuters.

In the first quarter, the non-oil sector grew 2.47 percent while the oil sector shrank 2.40 percent, according to the statistics office. Crude production rose slightly to 1.96 million barrels per day from 1.91 million in the previous quarter. Growth in the first quarter of 2018 was 1.89 percent.

The slowdown in growth could augment pressure on the Nigerian Central Bank to cut interest rates further when it announces its policy decision on Tuesday. The Monetary Policy Committee unexpectedly reduced the key rate in March to help boost expansion, Bloomberg noted.

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