The World Bank has reduced Nigeria’s 2022 growth forecast to 3.1 per cent from a previous forecast of 3.8 per cent.
In its latest Nigeria Development Update (NDU), launched in Abuja on Thursday, the bank said that the nation had to make hard choices or face a worse economic downturn, in the months and years ahead.
It said that the revision was due to slow economic growth in the third quarter from a year earlier, dragged down by the oil sector and a weak performance in other areas of the economy.
The bank forecast growth to slow 2.9 per cent next year.
It said, “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 per cent point lower than the previous projections at the time of the June 2022 NDU.
“Nigeria’s economic performance has weakened since the previous was published in June 2022 under the title of ‘The Continuing Urgency of Business Unusual.’
“Despite favorable global oil prices, ‘business as usual’ economic management is not delivering desired outcomes and, even if a crisis is avoided in the near-term, long-standing policy and institutional challenges are persisting and severely constraining the economy.”
It observed that the global economic environment has weakened, with economic activities in most major countries having slowed in 2022 amid high inflation and central banks shifting toward contractionary monetary policies.