IMF Says Nigeria’s Economy Will Probably Contract This Year
- Power shortage must be addressed, IMF representative Leon says
- Inflation to continue ‘upward trend’ through end of 2016
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Nigeria’s economy will probably contract this year as energy shortages and the delayed budget weigh on output, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“I think there is a high likelihood that the year 2016 as a whole will be a contractionary year,” Gene Leon, the fund’s resident representative in Nigeria, said in an interview in the capital, Abuja, on July 8. While the economy should look better in second half of the year, growth will probably not “be sufficiently fast, sufficiently rapid to be able to negate the outcome of” the first and second quarters, he said.