International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday disclosed that Nigeria needed to adapt its 2025 budget to lower oil prices and scale up cash transfers to shield the most vulnerable segments of its population facing hunger and poverty.
In its routine “Article IV” assessment of Nigeria’s economic policies, IMF said economic growth had been steady but too low in per capita terms, with inflation remaining high.
The fund predicted the country’s economy would expand at 3.4 per cent this year and 3.2 per cent in 2026. It said as Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria was under strain from relatively low international crude prices, which traded around $68 a barrel on Wednesday.
But the 2025 budget was squeezed by Nigeria’s assumption of oil production of two million barrels per day and an oil price of $75 a barrel.
“The international economic environment that Nigeria lives in and operates in is marked by the very, very large uncertainty, and in particular, international oil price volatility impacts Nigeria directly through the fiscal and the external balances as well as inflation,” said IMF’s mission chief for Nigeria, Axel Schimmelpfennig.
