Data coy projects 3.6% GDP growth rate for 2025

Nigeria Macro-Economic Outlook released by a data-driven company, Veriv Africa, says economic growth is projected to increase to 3.64 per cent in 2025, due to government’s policies.

It projects that government policies can positively impact the economy with a 3.64 per cent GDP growth rate in 2025.

Mr Basil Abia, Co-Founder of Veriv Africa, stated this on Thursday at the launch of its Nigeria Macro-Economic Outlook for 2025 in Abuja.

It was reported that Veriv Africa is a data insights company that leverages technology & expertise to turn data into actionable intelligence.

Abia said that the service sector in the past few years, led the GDP growth, which was expected to continue in 2025 along side the oil and gas, among other sectors.

The co-founder said that policies’ summersault in the past years, contributed greatly to economic downturn, but were expected to impact the economy positively in the coming year.

“Our projections for 2025 are in three scenarios, which include the worse, base case which is business as usual and bullish case scenario that is the best-case scenario.

“For best case scenario, we are looking at aggregate inflation rate for 2025 at 32 per cent, we are looking at Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) prices at N1,100 per litre,’’he said.

According to Abia, our exchange rate will be at N1,300 per dollar and we are looking at 3.64 per cent GDP.

He added that the projection for the base case scenario would be a GDP of 3.4 per cent real growth rate.

“Outside of that, we are also going to be doing N1,790 per dollar and we are going to be seeing PMS price over between N1,200 to N1,300 per litre.

“For the worse-case scenario, we are foreseeing the dollar going for between N1,900 to N2,000 and GDP growth rate will be around 2.5 per cent.

“We also foresee inflation rate at 36 per cent. The aggregate inflation rate for Nigeria for the entirety of 2024, will be around 33 per cent,’’Abia said.

He recommended that state governments should be more active in governance, implement the Nigeria’s Railway State policy, which empowered state governments to construct, operate and maintain railway tracks within their borders.

Abia also suggested that subnational governments should implement the Nigeria Electricity Act 2023, which enabled them to set up their electricity market, enable regulation, support the private sector to participate.

“The thrust of our recommendation to our economy in 2025 is to see that subnational governments take the centre stage in governance, in financialisation, how they govern business environment to be friendlier to businesses.

“I feel that the overt taxation, multiple taxations and most of that burden are emanating from subnational failing to govern.

“They should work on reducing the bottlenecks like the multiple checkpoints on the road for inter-state travels, which contribute heavily on food pricing.

“Other recommendations include ensuring more clarity on energy policies, pursuing comprehensive diversification, rethinking the Nigeria Monetary Policy, improve security, adopt new technologies in the energy sector, invest in human capital and infrastructure.”

According to him, the study has more insight into the mining sector, as well as the oil and gas, which aids our projections.

He added that the outlook would be distributed to government offices to aid policy making decisions.

Miss Omotayo Faro, Managing Director, Veriv Africa, said the macro-economic outlook mirrored the political and economic landscape of Nigeria for 2025, to help stakeholders, investors make informed decision.

Faro said they deployed the macro-economic model, which made it possible to infuse a lot of data.

She said that the company would come up with projected statistics in the food production ecosystem for the first quarter of 2025, among other projects.