(Ecofin Agency) – In 2020, Nigeria had experienced an unprecedented recession due to the combined shocks of covid-19, falling oil revenues and border closures. But for six quarters, the economy seems to have regained some stability.
In the first quarter of 2022, the Nigerian economy grew by 3.1%. This is what emerges from new quarterly GDP reportpublished this Monday, May 23 by the National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria (NBS).
This new positive growth confirms the period of stability in which the economy of the West African country has entered, since the period of recession of 2020. In that year, Nigeria’s GDP had plunged up to almost 8% in the second quarter, in full exposure of the covid-19 on the continent. From the fourth quarter of 2020, economic growth had ended up gradually picking up, recording its sixth consecutive positive quarterly development, during the first three months of 2022.
Despite this positive development, it should be noted that this growth is down compared to the previous quarter (fourth quarter 2021) which recorded growth of 3.9%. This gradual decline in economic growth since the first quarter of 2021 also coincides with the decline in oil production, on which the Nigerian economy remains heavily dependent. Thus, in the first three months of the current year, average oil production was 1.4 million barrels/day compared to 1.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Last year, gold production oil in the country was 1.7 million barrels/day in the first quarter.
« The real growth of the oil sector was -26.04% (year-on-year) in the 1st quarter of 2022 (…). It decreased by 17.99% compared to the fourth quarter of 2021 which was -8.06%. Quarter-on-quarter, the oil sector recorded a growth rate of 9.11% in the 1st quarter of 2022. The sector contributed 6.63% to the total real GDP in the 1st quarter of 2022, down from the figures recorded in the corresponding period of 2021 and up from the previous quarter, where it contributed 9.25% and 5.19% respectively “, indicates the NBS.
Conversely, the non-oil sector recorded positive performance, with real growth of 6% during the period studied, i.e. 5.2 percentage points more than the first quarter of 2021 and 1.3 points more than the first quarter of 2021. fourth quarter of 2021. In January and March 2022, the sector’s participation in GDP was 93%, thanks in particular to telecommunications, agriculture, trade, finance and manufacturing.
Moutiou Adjibi Nourou