By Uche Mbah
Nigeria will emerge from the current recession within six months, if the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, is to be believed.
Speaking on Monday at the Nigerian Economic Summit organized by the Economic Summit Group , holding in Abuja, Ahmed said that the recession has been induced by the Covid-19 Pandemic, and follows global trends.
She said that other countries like the United kingdom are also in recession. South Africa, for example, declined by 50 percent compared to Nigeria’s 6.1 percent in the first quarter in Nigeria.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Saturday announced the contraction of Nigeria’s economy in the third quarter of 2020 by 3.62 percent against a 6.10 percent contraction in the previous quarter.
With this, the economy has slipped into its second recession under the Buhari administration.
The last two previous recessions were also under Muhammadu Buhari, when he was head of state.
“Let me remind us that before the impact of COVID-19, the The Nigerian economy was experiencing sustained growth, which had been improving quarter by quarter until the second quarter of 2020, when the impact of the COVID-19 was felt.”
“Nigeria is not alone in this, but I will say that Nigeria has outperformed all of these economies in terms of the record of a negative growth,” Ahmed said.
“While the economy has entered into recession in the third quarter, the trend of the growth suggests that this will be a short-lived recession, and indeed by the fourth or, at worst, the first quarter of 2021, the country will exit the recession.
“Our expectation of a quick exit, which will be historically fast, is anchored on the several complementary fiscal, real sector, and monetary interventions that have been proactively introduced by the government to forestall a far worse decline of the economy and alleviate the negative consequences of the pandemic.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian equity market has reacted negatively to the news of the recession. The market declined in early trading Monday, with the All-share Index weakening by 1.07 percent to 33,773.72 points, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, led by the banking sector, which fell 5.79 percent, Reuters reported.
