IMF Predicts Nigeria’s GDP To Increase By 3.3% In 2024

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday announced that it expected Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to increase by 3.3% this year, compared to 2.9% last year.

IMF credited better performance in the country's oil industry, improved security and better farming sector for this growth. This announcement was made during a press conference on the world economic outlook addressed by Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas in Washington D.C.

Division chief of the research department in IMF Daniel Leigh explained that Nigeria's growth was steady and it was increasing gradually.

"We have seen an expansion from the recovering oil sector with a better security situation and also improved agriculture benefiting from the better weather conditions and the introduction of dry season farming," he said, Leadership reported.

He noted that there has been a broad-based increase in the financial sector and the IT sector. However, inflation has also increased, reflecting on "the reforms, the exchange rate and it has passed from imports to other goods."

"But with the tight monetary policies and the interest rate policy increase and significant interest rate in February and March, we see inflation declining to 23 percent next year and then 18 percent in 2026. So, it is in the right direction," he added.

Global growth, which was around 3.2% in 2023, is expected to stay the same in 2024 and 2025. The forecast for 2024 has been adjusted slightly higher by 0.1% compared to the January 2024 update, and by 0.3% compared to the October 2023 forecast, as per IMF's statement.

"Nevertheless, the projection for global growth in 2024 and 2025 is below the historical (2000–19) annual average of 3.8%, reflecting restrictive monetary policies and withdrawal of fiscal support, as well as low underlying productivity growth," the association stated, Punch reported.

While the IMF mentioned economic growth in Nigeria, recently Nigerian residents looted a government warehouse in the country's capital Abuja City to grab food items as the country dealt with an economic crisis.

Last month, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took steps to strengthen Nigeria's economic governance by establishing the Presidential Economic Coordination Council and the Economic Management Team Emergency Taskforce.