Nigeria’s Central Bank Sees Economic Growth At 2.38% In Fourth Quarter

Nigeria’s central bank has projected a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 2.38 percent for the last quarter of this year, better than the 2.28 percent economic growth rate in the third quarter of the year.
Hassan Mahmoud, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Director, Financial Policy and Regulation, revealed this in Yola on Tuesday.
This means the regulatory bank has revised its economic growth rate down from three percent projection for the year in March.
Going by this projection, the economy is expected to grow on an average of 2.19 percent in 2019.
“If you are looking at the 1.1 percent that we did in 2015/2016, and 2.28 percent that we did in the third quarter of 2019, we will see that we have really moved substantially.
“It is difficult to sustain positive rate GDP growth rates that we are projecting that by the fourth quarter of 2019. We are going to be doing 2.38 percent, that is CBN projection, the IMF is projecting growth rate of 3.31 percent.
On the wide gap between lending and saving rates in banks, he said that was dependent on customers’ negotiation skills.
He, however, said that it was the responsibility of the central bank to ensure that customers were not ripped off by the excesses of banks, saying the regulatory bank is making efforts to discourage such practice.