The International Monetary Fund has projected economic growth of 2.5 per cent for Nigeria in 2021.
This is higher than the 1.5 per cent IMF’s 2021 forecast earlier announced for the country in January.
The Washington-based institution made this known in its April World Economic Outlook report obtained on Tuesday.
The PUNCH reports that Nigeria exceeded recession as its Gross Domestic Product recorded a slight growth of 0.11 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed in February 2021.
The organisation also forecast a 3.4 per cent growth for the Sub-Saharan Africa region in 2021.
This is 0.2 per cent higher than the previous forecast for the region.
Part of the report read, “Following a sharp drop in 2020, only a mild and multispeed recovery is expected in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021. Thanks to the global manufacturing rebound in the second half of 2020,
growth exceeded expectations in some large exporting countries in the region (for example, Argentina, Brazil, Peru) bringing the 2021 forecast to 4.6 per cent (a 1 percentage point revision).
“The longer-term outlook continues to depend on the path of the pandemic, however. With some exceptions (for example, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico), most countries have not secured enough vaccines to cover their populations.
“Moreover, 2021 projections for the tourism-dependent Caribbean economies have been revised down by 1.5 percentage points to 2.4 per cent. The pandemic continues to exact a large toll on sub-Saharan Africa (especially, for example, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa). Following the largest contraction ever for the region (–1.9 per cent in 2020),
growth is expected to rebound to 3.4 per cent in 2021, significantly lower than the trend anticipated before
the pandemic. Tourism-reliant economies will likely be the most affected.”
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