The United Kingdom Trade Envoy to Nigeria, Helen Grant, on Saturday said that Nigeria was the fastest growing economy in Africa despite recession.
Ms Grant said this at the two-day Nigerian Diaspora Investment Summit (NDIS) organised by Nigerian in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), in collaboration with Nigeria Diaspora Summit Initiative (NDSI).
Nigeria GDP in the last two Quarters:
Q2 2020 GDP Growth: -6.10%
Q3 2020 GDP Growth: -3.62%
Granted that Nigeria is in recession, yet its economy actually grew by +12.1% QoQ in Q3 2020, the most growth in 7yrs.
Also, Research Gate findings reveal that the economic downturn in Nigeria was triggered by a combination of declining oil price and spillovers from the COVID-19 outbreak.
This not only led to a fall in the demand for oil products but also stopped economic activities from taking place when social distancing and lockdown policies were enforced.
The government responded swiftly to the crisis by providing financial assistance to businesses and a small number of households that were affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
The monetary authority also adopted accommodative monetary policies and offered a targeted ₦3.5trillion loan support to some sectors.
These efforts should have prevented the economic crisis from occurring but it didn’t. Economic agents could not freely engage in economic activities for fear of contracting the COVID-19 disease that was spreading very fast at the time.
All of these efforts were articulated, executed and supervised by the Osinbajo-led Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC).
The Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP), approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on June 24, 2020, was developed by the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC), established by President Muhammadu Buhari on March 30, 2020.
Chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the ESC comprised several Cabinet Ministers as well as the Group Managing Director of the NNPC and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
