World Bank Reduces Nigeria’s GDP

The World Bank has reduced  Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product  growth rate from 3.2 percent  to 3.1 percent for 2022, due to weak economic performance in the last six months.

In its latest Nigeria Development Update (NDU), launched in Abuja, yesterday, the bank said that the nation had to make hard choices or face a worse economic downturn, in the months and years ahead.

“The World Bank now projects that real GDP will grow by 3.1 percent in 2022 and 2.9 percent in 2023–24, 0.3 of a percentage point lower than the previous projections at the time of the June 2022 NDU,” it said.

According to the organisation, “Nigeria’s economic performance has weakened since the previous was published in June 2022 under the title of ‘The Continuing Urgency of Business Unusual.’

It was observed that the global economic environment has been  weakened with economic activities in most major countries having slowed in 2022 due to  high inflation.

The bank noted the irony of the Nigerian economy which has failed to benefit from the high oil prices compared to the case with other oil producing nations of the world.

“There are two reasons why Nigeria is not benefiting from high global oil prices: First, lower oil production: As a result of high production costs, theft and insecurity, joint-venture cash-call arrears, and inadequate investment, Nigeria’s crude oil output has been falling since 2020 and has consistently been below its Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota since June 2020.