We’ve exited recession for good – FG

The Federal Government has insisted that based on the recent data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the country has fully exited recession.

Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, disclosed this on Wednesday when he briefed the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on the most recent Gross Domestic Product and other related economic performance indices as released last week.

Udoma said; “You will recall that the NBS indicated that in the last quarter of 2017 the economy had continued its positive growth trajectory by growing by 1.92%. This is higher than the previous quarter when it grew by 1.40%. And higher still from the 2nd Quarter, when it grew by 0.72%.

“The numbers clearly show that the economy has fully exited recession. Council members were particularly pleased to note that this growth is very broad based with Agriculture growing at 4.23% up from 3.06% in the 3rd Quarter. Other sectors such as Transportation and storage, Electricity and gas production, Metal Ores, and Industry all grew.

“Particularly noteworthy were the growth recorded in Trade (2.07% and Services (0.10%) after six quarters of negative growth. Council members were also happy to note that overall the non-oil sector grew by 1.45%, its strongest since 2015. Inflation is also trending downwards moving down from 18.72% in January 2017 to 15.13% in January 2018.”