Nigeria’s people are getting poorer despite the country’s slow recovery from recession and economic reforms are urgently needed, the International Monetary Fund has said.
The Fund expects the government to “muddle through” in the medium term, and any progress could also be threatened if elections next year consume political energy and resources, it said in a report seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
Since emerging from recession in the second quarter of 2017, Nigerian officials have repeatedly boasted that they have set the economy back on track.
But critics say much of the recovery comes from a return to crude oil dependence after a rise in global crude oil prices and a rebound in crude oil production, more the result of militants in the Niger Delta halting attacks on oil facilities than of economic policy under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
The IMF said in the report that the outlook for growth had improved but remained challenging.
“Comprehensive and coherent” economic policies “remain urgent and must not be delayed by approaching elections and recovering oil prices,” it stated in its annual Article IV review of Nigeria’s economy.
Reuters