Publication: Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, Fall 2018: Investing in Human Capital for Nigeria's Future
Loading...
Date
2018-11-21
ISSN
Published
2018-11-21
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Nigerian economy remains dependent on the small oil sector (under 10 percent of GDP) for the bulk of its fiscal revenues and foreign exchange earnings. This makes Nigeria’s balance of payments and government budgets vulnerable to volatilities in oil prices. Indeed, growth and investment in Nigeria have been negatively impacted by repeated oil-price driven boom-bust cycles. The oil price shock of late 2014 and its aftermath pushed the economy into recession and precipitated a major budgetary crisis at the national and state levels which brought to light the longer-term trend of weak domestic revenue mobilization. Nigeria’s weak revenue mobilization has major implications for growth and development, including for improving its dire social service delivery outcomes. Thus, the country needs to take concrete steps to break its oil dependency to improve its economic and social outcomes. Oil revenues are recovering with increasing oil prices, but distributions to the tiers of government are constrained by the unbudgeted fuel subsidy and other deductions. The fuel subsidy, no longer an explicit first line deduction from oil revenues, mostly benefits the affluent and it is also widely-known that a portion of Nigeria’s imported petrol is smuggled out to neighboring countries where petrol is more expensive. The constrained net oil revenues, combined with non-oil revenues that are constrained by limited tax policy reforms and are thus stagnated (relative to GDP), limit overall revenue realization, thus constraining budget execution and the build-up of fiscal buffers. The growth in the public debt stock between the first half of 2017 and the first half of 2018 was mainly attributable to the increased Eurobond issuances, some of which were used to liquidate costlier domestic short-term debt. The Nigeria Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020 aims to achieve macroeconomic stability and economic diversification and there is thus the need to accelerate its implementation progress. The special focus topic for this report is on human capital development in Nigeria. Studies show that between 10 and 30 percent of the differences in per capita income between countries can be attributed to human capital. The economic burden of malaria alone in Nigeria, accounting for direct and indirect costs excluding mortality, is estimated at 13.5 percent of GDP. However, in the quest for sustainable growth, Nigeria, like many other countries, has underinvested in human capital. While physical capital remains critical, it does not fully account for improvements in growth.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2018. Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, Fall 2018: Investing in Human Capital for Nigeria's Future. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31008 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, April 2018(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-04)The Nigeria Biannual Economic Update is a product of the staff of the World Bank and has three broad aims. First, it reports on the key developments in the Nigerian Economy in the recent past Secondly, it summarizes the likely economic outcomes in the short-to-medium term, given the policy developments, and highlights key short-term risks and upside potentials. Finally, the Update provides a more in-depth examination of selected highly relevant economic issues. The Nigeria Biannual Economic Update is intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, business leaders, financial market participants, and the community of analysts and professionals engaged inNigeria’s economy.Publication Nigeria Economic Update, Fall 2019(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-12-01)Nigeria continues its recovery from the 2016 recession, sustaining an estimated 2 percent growthrate in 2019. The collapse of global oil prices during 2014–16, combined with lower domestic oil production, led to a sudden slowdown in economic activity. Nigeria’s annual real GDP growth rate, which averaged 7 percent from 2000 to 2014, fell to 2.7 percent in 2015 and to -1.6 percent in 2016. Growth rebounded to 0.8 percent in 2017, 1.9 percent in 2018, and then plateaued at 2 percent in the first half of 2019, where it is expected to remain for the rest of the year. Services, particularly telecoms, remained the main driver of growth in 2019, although trade started contracting amidst increasing use of policy measures aimed at import substitution. Agricultural growth picked up slightly but remains affected by insurgency in the Northeast region and ongoing farmer-herder conflicts. Industrial performance was mixed: growth in the oil sector remained stable, but manufacturing production slowed in a context of weaker power sector supply. Overall, the slow pace of recovery in 2019 is attributable to weak consumer demand and lower public and private investment. The annual headline inflation rate fell from a peak of 15.7 percent in 2016 to a projected 11.6 percent in 2019 but remains high and above the central bank’s target of 6–9 percent. The focus section of this report analyzes the evolution of productivity in Nigeria and identifies policies and institutions that can leverage productivity growth to accelerate Nigeria’s economic expansion and create new job opportunities. The analysis highlights four key priorities. First, ensuring policy transparency and predictability will be critical to reduce investment risk and promote growth outside the extractive industry. Second, investing in infrastructure, strengthening land tenure security, improving educational outcomes, and liberalizing the trade regime and enhancing trade and transport facilitation would help develop value chains and facilitate the efficient reallocation of factors of production, making Nigeria more cost-competitive. Third, reducing regulatory discretion would help attract foreign and domestic investment to the nonoil sector, encourage competition, and promote formalization.And fourth, improving access to finance could enable new firms to compete with incumbents and allow more productive firms to scale up their operations. Actions in these areas would lay the groundwork for Nigeria’s transition to a new economic model that more effectively utilizes its large, young population and abundant natural resources to support sustainable growth and poverty reduction.Publication Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, April 2019(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04-01)Nigeria's emergence from recession remains slow: real GDP grew by 1.9 percent in 2018. While this was above the 0.8 percent growth of 2017, it was below the population growth rate, government projections and pre-recession levels. The oil and gas sector reverted to contraction from the second quarter of the year and the non-oil economy was thus the main driver of growth in 2018. While agriculture slowed down significantly due to conflict and weather events, whose effects were not counteracted by direct interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), non-oil, non-agricultural growth, which remained negative up to the third quarter of 2017 strengthened through 2018 - but remained weak – with services (primarily ICT) resuming as the key driver. As the oil sector is not labor-intensive, and the non-oil economy was still relatively weak, nearly a quarter of the work force was unemployed in 2018; and another 20 percent under-employed. With 3.9 million net entrants into the labor force (now 90.5 million people) during 2018 (up to September) (4.5 percent growth), but virtually no growth in the stock of jobs, unemployment rose by 2.7 percentage points since end-2017, and more than doubled compared to the pre-recession levels (9.9 percent in Q3 of 2015).Publication Kyrgyz Republic Biannual Economic Update, Fall 2015(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)GDP grew at a rate of 6.8 percent, year-on-year (y/y), between January and August, boosted by frontloaded gold production and a strong performance of the agricultural sector. Gold output grew by 46 percent (y/y), while the non-gold GDP growth rate reached 4.5 percent, up 0.9 percentage points from the same period in the previous year. However, gold production is projected to decelerate markedly during the remainder of 2015, while increasingly adverse external conditions and exchange-rate developments are expected to depress domestic consumption and private investment, as well as foreign demand. As a result, the overall growth rate for 2015 is projected to slow to 2 percent. As of August the headline inflation rate had fallen to 5.8 percent (y/y) from 10.5 percent at end-2014, but the combined effect of higher public spending and exchange-rate pressures are expected to drive up prices during the final months of the year, underscoring the importance of maintaining a tight monetary stance. Looking beyond 2015, the Kyrgyz economy is projected to recover over the medium term, and public finances are expected to stabilize, but this generally positive outlook is subject to significant downside risks. In the baseline scenario, growth is projected to accelerate to 4.2 percent in 2016, driven by higher gold production and an expected acceleration in regional economic activity. Growth in the non-gold sectors should be relatively robust at around 3.7 percent, but a slower-than-anticipated recovery in Russia and Kazakhstan could threaten this projection. Moreover, slower growth in both the domestic and regional economies could complicate the process of fiscal consolidation.Publication Senegal Economic Update, December 2014 : Learning from the Past for a Better Future(Washington, DC, 2014-12)Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was a disappointing 3.5 percent in 2013. It remained largely unchanged compared to 2012, reflecting a decline in cereal production and stagnation in the industrial sector. Services continue to drive the economy. The economic outlook for 2014 was more positive, but poor rainfall and the Ebola outbreak have forced downward revisions in GDP growth projections, now expected to reach 4.5 percent. The plan Senegal emergent aims to break with this trend, with a welcome focus on higher economic growth. However, its ambitions may exceed available resources and will likely depend on accelerated reforms and a strong private sector response. This first economic update begins with an overview of the macroeconomic situation in Senegal, starting with a review of 2013 before examining the initial results of 2014. After a brief look at the challenges posed by unemployment and poverty, the report turns to an assessment of the growth strategy. It presents analysis of past performance since 1990 in order to understand better what needs to be done differently. The report concludes with a few recommendations.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Investing in Skills to Accelerate Job Transitions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-28)The paper reviews the dynamics of human capital – mostly skills – accumulation and utilization during successful and static episodes of structural transformation in a sample of more than 90 countries over the last thirty years to identify cases when improvements in human capital are not met by skills demand - signaling an unbalance between investment in skills and other factors of production. A framework is proposed to differentiate inefficient skills investments by cases of over- and under-investment relative to skills demand, cases of skills underutilization, even at the right level of investment, and cases of skills mismatches due human capital’s misallocation across geographical areas and field of study. Based on country case studies, the paper examines the different forms of inefficient human capital accumulation and utilization and the potential market and policy failures that lead to such inefficiencies across individuals, firms, and governments. The framework is used to differentiate policy priorities depending on the constraints to efficient human capital accumulation and utilization and the stage of the structural transformation.Publication World Development Report 2017(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-30)Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.