Nigeria will be able to exit the current recession by the first quarter of 2021, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has said.
Speaking at the ongoing 26th Nigerian Economic Summit organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning on Monday in Abuja, the minister said that the COVID-19-induced recession followed the pattern across the world where many countries had entered economic recession.
“Nigeria is not alone in this, but I will say that Nigeria has outperformed all of these economies in terms of the record of a negative growth,” local media reports quoted Ahmed as saying.
The Nigerian economy slipped into recession when it recorded negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the second and third consecutive quarters this year.
According to the performance of the GDP figures released by the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for the first nine months of 2020, stood at -2.48 percent and recorded a -6.10 percent in the second quarter.
This is the second time in four years that the Nigerian economy will be slipping into recession. In 2016, the Nigerian economy went into recession, but it was able to exit the recession in 2017.
GIK/APA