Economics
Four Charts That Show Nigeria’s Economic Dilemma
- Economy contracting while inflation rate is at 11-year high
- Foreign investment only one fifth of where it was in 2014
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Nigerian central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele faces the unenviable task of balancing the needs of an economy that shrank every quarter so far this year with an inflation rate that’s at the highest in more than a decade.
Emefiele will announce the Monetary Policy Committee’s decision on interest rates on Tuesday afternoon in Abuja, the capital. While all but two of the 20 economists in a Bloomberg survey forecast the MPC will continue to hold its benchmark interest rate at a record high of 14 percent, a 2.2 percent year-on-year contraction in gross domestic product in the third quarter complicates the task of the central bank trying to fight price growth and support the nation’s currency amid a dire shortage of foreign exchange.