Hurray, the Economy Gets a Breather?

Hurray, the Economy Gets a Breather?

At a time the country is confronted by multi-faceted socio-political challenges, which ranged from insecurity to increasing political anxiety, a report last week that the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.27 per cent in 2019, was a huge relief for a majority of the people.

A report released last Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that the 2019 growth was higher than the 1.91 per cent growth achieved in 2018.

A further analysis of the NBS report also showed that the fourth quarter 2019 GDP grew by 2.55 per cent (year-on-year) in real terms. The fourth quarter growth was 0.17 per cent higher than the 2.38 per cent growth recorded by the economy at the same period in 2018.

Consequently, the report signposted an increase of 0.27 per cent points, when juxtaposed with the third quarter of 2019. Thus, the strong fourth quarter 2019 growth rate represented the highest quarterly growth performance since the 2016 recession.

Without doubt, this is a commendable feat, which was believed to have shocked even some of the global financial institutions.
It is however yet to be seen how the leadership would ride on the back of this development to address other issues that seem to be dwarfing their mark. But, this is certainly worthy of mention.

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