Publication: Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, April 2019: Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene – A Wake-up Call
Date
2019-04-01
ISSN
Published
2019-04-01
Author(s)
World Bank Group
Abstract
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).
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2019. Nigeria Biannual Economic Update, April 2019: Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene – A Wake-up Call. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31514 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”