The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said Nigeria’s inflation rate will drop to 26.3% in 2024, noting that the country’s economy will equally grow by 3.3% this year.
The inflation has increased consistently from the beginning of the year, starting at 29.90% in January and closing the first quarter at 33.2% in March.
In its revised Global Economic Outlook for 2024 released on Tuesday, the Bretton Woods institution left the growth prospects for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) in 2024 unchanged from its previous outlook earlier in the year as the downward forecast in Angola was offset by an upgrade in Nigeria’s growth prospects.
The report noted that Nigeria’s economy would grow by 3.0% in 2025, representing a 0.1% decline from the Fund’s projection for January 2024.
Furthermore, the SSA region, according to the report, is expected to grow by 3.8% in 2024 and 4.0% in 2025.
The report stated, “In Sub-Saharan Africa, growth is projected to rise from an estimated 3.4 per cent in 2023 to 3.8 per cent in 2024 and 4.0 per cent in 2025, as the negative effects of earlier weather shocks subside, and supply issues gradually improve.”
The report also highlighted that, global growth is expected to remain stable at 3.2 per cent in both 2024 and 2025, maintaining the same rate as it did in 2023. The growth forecast for 2024 has been adjusted upward by 0.1 percentage points since the January 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) update, and by 0.3 percentage points since the October 2023 WEO.
