Nigeria’s economic growth falls to 1.87% in Q1

Nigeria’s economic growth rate slowed to 1.87 percent in the first quarter of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

It is the slowest quarterly growth rate in one-and-a-half years, and comes amid the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The economy grew by 2.55 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, up from 2.28 percent in Q3. The country’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 2.12 percent in Q2 and 2.1 percent in Q1.

The NBS, in its latest GDP report, said the Q1 performance was recorded against the backdrop of significant global disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 public health crisis, a sharp fall in oil prices and restricted international trade.

It said the drop in the economic performance reflected “the earliest effects of the disruption, particularly on the non-oil economy.”

The statistics office said aggregate GDP stood at N35.65 trillion in nominal terms in the quarter under review.

“This performance was higher when compared to the first quarter of 2019 which recorded N31.82 trillion, with a nominal growth rate of 12.01 percent year on year,” it added.

Relative to the first quarter of 2019, the nominal growth rate was higher by 0.11 percent but lower than the preceding quarter by 0.32 percent.

The country’s daily oil production averaged 2.07 million barrels per day in Q1 2020, compared to 1.99 million bpd in the same quarter of 2019 and 2.01 million bpd in Q4 2019.