Nigeria Sliding Towards Economic Recession As GDP Shrinks

The National Bureau Of Statistics (NBS) has last weekend released a damning report that Nigerias economy risks falling into recession after the economy was seen shrinking in the first quarter of 2016 as outputs in the Manufacturing, Financial, Real Estate, Oil & Gas fell most significantly.

Nigeria Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is used to measure the output of any economy reduced by 0.36% from 2.11% recorded in the last quarter of last year 2015 figure as disclosed in the report released by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics over the weekend.
According to NBS the last time Nigeria recorded such a negative growth rate in GDP was in 1995 during General Sani Abacha regime when the economy has a GDP growth of -0.3% based on World Bank statistics report then.

The new figure showed a GDP of -0.36% recorded in the first quarter of this year which a further reduction by 2.47% points from the growth recorded in the preceding quarter and also lower by 4.32% points from the growth recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2015.
The report and figures obtained from NBS almost all the sectors recorded a decline in output, from Oil&Gas, Electricity & Gas Industries and Manufacturing with negative GDP growth of -1.89%, -44.4%, -5.49% and -7% respectively.

An Economic recession is said to be in any economy when a Nation's economy experiences negative growth for two consecutive quarters. In the case of Nigeria, bearing in mind the current economic downturn as a result of Government position without a clear cut policy formulation in place and a foreign exchange challenges being faced by Manufacturing and industries it is expected that the current trend will continue. Despite the world bank call for currency devaluation and with Nigerian government remaining adamant and against such, it is very likely the economy might be plunged into a murky water of economic recession bu second quarter of the year.