The World Bank, situated in Washington, has predicted that Nigeria’s GDP will expand by 3.3% this year.
This was revealed in the most recent Global Economic Prospect (GEP) from the top development bank.
As a result, Nigeria’s economy, which is the largest in Africa, is predicted to increase by 0.4 percentage points more than the 2.9% predicted growth rate for the previous year.
Concurrently, the forecast lags somewhat below sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) 3.8% growth, but is considerably higher than the predicted 2.3% global average.
The global bank’s growing optimism about the economy’s prospects since downstream oil and foreign exchange reforms began in the middle of last year is confirmed by the most recent projections for 2024 and 2025, which are significantly higher than the June forecasts of three and 3.1 percent, respectively.
The structural reforms are anticipated to increase fiscal income, and the research predicts that Nigeria’s inflation would “gradually ease as the effects of last year’s exchange rate reforms and removal of fuel subsidies fade.”
Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is anticipated to pick up speed to 3.8 percent in 2024 and then to 4.1 percent in 2025 as financial conditions loosen and inflationary pressures subside.
Although there hasn’t been much of a shift in the estimates for regional growth in 2024 and 2025 from the June forecasts, these aggregates conceal a variety of upgrades and downgrades at the national level.
Non-resource-rich economies are predicted to continue growing at a rate higher than the regional average, even if the biggest economies in SSA are predicted to develop at a slower rate than the rest of the area.
“Growth in the region is expected to accelerate from 3.9 per cent in 2023 to 5 per cent in 2024 and a further 5.3 per cent in 2025, excluding the three largest SSA economies,” the report stated regarding Africa.
