Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Economic indices stabilize as GDP inches up

There are indications that the declining trend in nation’s economic health is on the recovery path going by current indices from the National Bureau of Statitistics, NBS, which show a marginal increase in Gross Domestic Product, GDP, in the third quarter (Q3) 2015 against what was recorded in the second and first quarter (Q2 and Q1) 2015. In the Q3, 2015 report released, yesterday, by NBS, Nigeria’s GDP grew by 2.84 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) in real terms as against 2.57 per cent growth recorded in the preceding quarter, though lower by 3.38 percentage points from growth recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2014. The GDP rate was 3.86 per cent in the first quarter of this year. Two days earlier, NBS had reported that the nation’s inflation rate has lowered to 9.3 per cent in October 2015, from 9.4 per cent in the preceding month. Both inflation and GDP, the two key measures of economy’s health have been in the negative directions since this year due to massive decline in the nation’s oil revenue, the bottlenecks in the foreign exchange market as well as the relative inactivity in the public sector attributable to lack of full take-off and activity at the federal government level. GDP is the monetary of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. In the Q3 2015 the GDP at current basic price was N24.313 trillion as against N22.859 trillion in Q2 2015 and N22.933 in Q3 2014. On the other hand, inflation mirrors a sustained increase in the general level of prices for goods and services. The inflation rate was 9.3 per cent in October 2015, slightly down from 9.4 per cent recorded in September 2015. The slight improvement in the GDP during Q3 may be attributed to equally slight improvement in the output of the oil industry as NBS report says that peliminary data on Oil production reflects output at 2.17 million barrels per day (mbpd) up from 2.0 mbpd in Q2.

No comments:

Post a Comment