IMF projects Nigeria’s economic growth rate to drop to 3%.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Nigeria’s economy will grow at a much slower pace of 3 percent in 2025.

The projection is a downgrade from the IMF’s estimate of 3.2 percent announced in October 2024, according to the fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) report presented at the ongoing spring meetings in Washington DC.

The Bretton Woods organisation also expects Nigeria’s economic growth to further slow down at 2.7 percent in 2026, owing to lower oil prices.

The estimates reflect a broader decline in global economic activities, following the announcement of tariffs by United States and countermeasures by trading partners, according to the IMF.

Analysis of the latest forecasts for Nigeria indicates that the West African nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow faster than that of South Africa, estimated at 1 percent this year and 1.3 percent in 2026.

On April 9, the crude oil price dropped to $59 for the first time since February 2021 — lower than Nigeria’s budget estimate of over $70.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington DC, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist and director of the research department at the IMF, said the decline in oil prices is coming mostly from weaker global demand.

“So it’s the weakening of global activity that is driving the decline in prices,” he said.

“There’s been some increase in supply coming from OPEC plus countries, but broadly speaking, the decline is mostly coming from weaker demand.

”So that is going to play out in ways we’d expect: the commodity exporters are going to face lower export revenues from the decline in oil prices.”

He said this would weigh on their fiscal outlook, and on their growth.