Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed says the recent exit of the country’s economy from recession is a key indicator that it is poised for stable and consistent growth.
She further said this shows that the diversification effort of the President Buhari led administration has already started yielding the needed dividends.
Ahmed made these declarations on Wednesday, while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of the weekly cabinet meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
She said the Nigerian government has been vigorously implementing its Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) approved by Federal Executive Council last June, with Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo at the helm of affairs, leading the implementation of the plan.
Ahmed said: “At the Federal Executive Council, we had the opportunity to brief Council on the National Bureau of Statistics’ recently published fourth quarter GDP report estimates, which measured the economic growth of our country.
“Nigeria’s GDP in the fourth quarter of 2020 grew by 0.11% and in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2020. This follows, if you recall, two consecutive negative growth in the third quarter and the second quarter of 2020, which saw us as a country going into recession. So as a result of this fourth quarter positive growth, the total growth for the year 2020 is -1.92%.
“Recall that we had ourselves reported, that we will be going into a negative growth at the end of 2020 at -4% and some of the international development institutions reported much higher negative growth for Nigeria. So, at -1.92%, it is a very good performance.”
Positives
The Finance Minister said exiting recession in the 4th quarter of 2020 was the shortest-lived so far experienced by the country.
She noted that despite the recession, the country still recorded some positives in many sectors of the economy.
“But also, the good story for us is that, with this positive growth in the fourth quarter it means Nigeria has exited recession. This is one of the shortest-lived recessions we have witnessed in the country, despite the impact of the COVID-19, but I must say that the result of this exit is as a result of the fiscal policies, the monetary policies and the Economic Sustainability Plan that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has been implementing.
“So out of the 46 sectors of the economy, 17 recorded positive growth and this is higher than the number of sectors that had recorded positive growth in the third quarter. In real terms, the growth between the third quarter and the fourth quarter is a positive growth of 3.73%, a movement within one quarter we have never witnessed in this country, so we’re growing from one quarter to another by 3.73%.
“That also the movement from the second quarter to the third quarter also witnessed a growth of 2.48% is an indication that the policies that are being implemented are the right ones and the trajectory is is a positive one and that Nigeria is well on its way of restoring a consistent and stable growth, a growth that we hope to grow to be a strong growth from the fragile growth that we now have at 0.11%.
“So, this is a good performance, but on a broad sectoral basis, the Agricultural Sector posted a strong growth of 3.42% during the last quarter and when you compare to the previous quarter, it’s a much better performance.
“Similarly, Services Sector grew. Other sectors that witnessed slowdown in growth include Industry, crude, petroleum and natural gas sectors. The decline in oil production and prices in 2020, of course reflective of global drop in demand and it is one of the major reasons why our country went into recession.
“Another positive story for us is that the non-oil sector grew by 1.69%. This is an indication that the diversification efforts that the economy has been pushing is actually also posting results; while the oil sector is declining, the non-oil sector is growing.
“We’ve seen overall economic activities reported strongly in the quarry and minerals sector, in the ICT and Telecommunications sector, in the cement industry, in broadcasting, in crop production as well as in agriculture.
“On the other hand, there are some sectors that are still witnessing negative and that’s why I said the growth is still fragile. These sectors include oil refining, air transport, coal mining, crude petroleum production, as well as accommodation and food services.”
Nigeria’s economy surprisingly came out of a recession in the fourth quarter of 2020as growth in agriculture and telecommunications offset a sharp drop in oil production.
Gross domestic product grew 0.11% in the three months through December from a year earlier, compared with a decline of 3.6% in the third quarter, the Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics said on its website last week Thursday.
Suzan O
