Zainab Ahmed: Nigeria Will Exit Current Recession Soon

24 Nov Zainab Ahmed: Nigeria Will Exit Current Recession Soon

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said that the current recession will be exited quickly.

She spoke Ahmed at the ongoing 26th Nigerian Economic Summit organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) and the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, where she said the country will emerge from the recession in the fourth quarter 2020 or by the first quarter of 2021.

The finance minister said the COVID-19-induced recession followed the pattern across the world where many countries had entered an economic recession.

“Let me remind us that before the impact of COVID-19, the Nigerian economy was experiencing sustained growth, which had been improving quarter by quarter until the second quarter of 2020, when the impact of the COVID-19 was felt

“Nigeria is not alone in this, but I will say that Nigeria has outperformed all of these economies in terms of the record of a negative growth.”

Ahmed continued that, “While the economy has entered into recession in the third quarter, the trend of the growth suggests that this will be a short-lived recession, and indeed by the fourth or, at worst, the first quarter of 2021, the country will exit recession.

“Our expectation of a quick exit, which will be historically fast, is anchored on the several complementary fiscal, real sector and monetary interventions that have been proactively introduced by government to forestall a far worse decline of the economy and alleviate the negative consequences of the pandemic.”