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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected 0.8 percent GDP growth for Nigeria in 2017, a little below World Bank’s projections of 1percent growth for the period.

Both projections are signifying Nigeria’s economic recovery from the current recession.

In a global economic outlook report released yesterday, the IMF also projected that Nigeria’s economy will grow at 0.7 per cent in 2018.

The IMF had in October last year forecasted that the nation’s economy would grow at 0.2 per cent in 2018 but this was reviewed upwards to 0.8 per cent this January.

The IMF said the upward review was as a result of positive prospects in the Nigerian economy likely to manifest this year.

“Nigeria’s forecasts were also revised up, primarily reflecting higher oil production due to security improvements,” the IMF stated in its report.

The IMF said after a lackluster outturn in 2016, economic activity is projected to pick up pace in 2017 and 2018, especially in emerging market and developing economies.

“There is a wide dispersion of possible outcomes around the projections, given uncertainty surrounding the policy stance of the incoming US administration and its global ramifications.

“The assumptions underpinning the forecast should be more specific by the time of the April 2017 World Economic Outlook, as more clarity emerges on US policies and their implications for the global economy,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, the World Bank forecasted that Nigeria’s economy would grow at 1 per cent in 2017 and 2.5 per cent in 2018.

The World Bank said stagnant global trade, subdued investment and heightened policy uncertainty marked another difficult year for the world economy last year but a moderate recovery is expected for 2017, with receding obstacles to activity in commodity exports and solid domestic demand in commodity importers.

In Nigeria, the forecast for the economy is more ambitious, beyond both the IMF and the World Bank.

The federal government in its Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) projected that the economy would grow at 3 per cent in 2017 and 4.26 per cent in 2018.

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udo Udoma, said the economy was projected to grow by 3 per cent in 2017, 4.26 per cent in 2018 per cent and 4.04 per cent in 2019.

He said, “In the 2017 to 2019 MTEF, the highlight is that the government intends to intensify efforts in pursuing non-oil driven economy. We intend to intensify efforts to diversify the economy.” FLIGHT

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