By Chika Otuchikere
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has officially announced that Nigeria’s economy has again, plunged into a recession.
Nigeria’s economy also slide into a recession in 2016, barely one year after President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn-in as Democratic president. This is, therefore, the second recession in a space of four years.
Official figures published by the NBS on Saturday, indicate that the economy shrank again in the third quarter of this year. The nation’s economy maintained a second consecutive negative growth after contracting by 3.62 per cent in the third quarter.
The cumulative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first nine months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 per cent just as it recorded a -6.10 per cent in the second quarter.
The NBS noted: “Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) recorded a growth rate of –3.62% (year-on-year) in real terms in the third quarter of 2020,” the report partly read.
“Cumulatively, the economy has contracted by -2.48%. While this represents an improvement of 2.48% points over the –6.10% growth rate recorded in the preceding quarter (Q2 2020), it also indicates that two consecutive quarters of negative growth have been recorded in 2020.
“Furthermore, growth in Q3 2020 was slower by 5.90% points when compared to the third quarter of 2019 which recorded a real growth rate of 2.28% year on year.”
According to the report, for the first time in more than three years, the Nigerian economy shrank in the second quarter of 2020 as the GDP fell by 6.10 per cent, compared with a growth of 1.87 per cent in Q1.
In August, the NBS attributed the economic decline in Q2 to significantly lower levels of both domestic and international economic activity resulting from nationwide shutdown efforts aimed at containing the COVID-19 pandemic.
The contraction in Q2 2020, it noted brought to an end the three-year trend of low but positive real growth rates recorded since the 2016/17 recession.
