By Adedapo Adesanya
The much-awaited Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers of Nigeria for the second quarter of the year will be released on Monday, August 24, 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has promised.
The Statistician-General of the Federation and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the stats office, Mr Yemi Kale, confirmed this on Thursday, adding that the figures would be announced at exactly 8:30 am.
The Q2 2020 GDP is being anticipated by many, including the government, analysts and others. It will give an insight into the state of the nation’s economy.
In the second quarter of 2020, the federal government locked down two of the two key economic hubs of Nigeria, Lagos and Abuja, to curtail the spread of coronavirus in the country. Ogun State, which has close proximity with Lagos State, was also shut down by the government because of the same reason. During the more than a month period, most businesses were closed and when the movement restrictions were eased in May, only a few businesses were allowed to operate.
Even at the moment, not all sectors have been allowed to resume operations like the entertainment and the education sectors are still on lockdown across the country.
In the second quarter of the year, advanced economies like the United Kingdon, France and even South Africa all slipped into recession as a result of the virus, which still has no cure.
Already, the federal government has said it was expecting the nation’s economy to fall into a crisis because of shortage in the inflow of revenue from the sale of crude oil and others.
Speaking last Thursday at a five-day interactive session on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP), the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, noted that, “Nigeria’s Q2 GDP growth is in all likelihood negative and unless we achieve a very strong Q3 2020 economic performance, the Nigerian economy is likely to lapse into a second recession in four years with significant adverse consequences.”
This follows a deeper contraction of about 5.4 per cent projected for the year by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which worsened the scenario from 3.4 per cent it projected in April 2020.
Nigeria’s GDP grew by 1.87 per cent in the first quarter of 2020. According to the NBS, the year-on-year growth posted by Africa’s largest economy came despite the backdrop of significant global disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 public health crisis, a sharp fall in oil prices and restricted international trade.
In Q1 2020, the aggregate GDP stood at N35.647 trillion in nominal terms, higher than N31.824 trillion recorded in the first quarter of 2019, with a nominal growth rate of 12.01 per cent year-on-year.
Since its recovery from the last recession in Q2 2017, Nigeria’s GDP has grown slowly, with a growth rate of 2.55 per cent recorded in Q4 2019, the highest in recent quarters.
Dipo Olowookere