How Nigeria’s Per capita GDP growth compares with peers over last decade

While Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey saw per capita GDP growth contract for the first time in a decade in 2019, Nigeria’s contraction started in 2015 and has remained negative since then.

The secret to the success of Nigeria’s MINT peers (Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey) is that they have positioned their economies to attract foreign capital, according to World Bank and IMF economists.

The term “MINT” was popularised by former Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O’neil, in reference to Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey, which at the time had favourable demographics and benign economic prospects.

The four countries also had comparable levels of FDI but the story has since changed.

In 1995, Nigeria’s FDI stock (a measure of the total level of direct investment at a given point in time) was $USD 16.25 billion, ranking it third, behind Mexico’s $41.1 billion and Indonesia’s $20 billion. Turkey had the least FDI stock of $14 billion, according to UNCTAD data.

By 2017, all four countries looked so different.

Although Mexico and Indonesia still led the way in terms of FDI stock, Nigeria has fallen off third place by no small margin and is now firmly rooted at the bottom.

Between 1995 and 2017, Mexico’s FDI stock jumped 1,089 percent to $489 billion, while Indonesia and Turkey’s FDI stock surged 1,104 percent and 1,110 percent to $248.5 billion and $180.7 billion respectively.

Nigeria is almost unrecognisable from when it was second only to

Mexico in 1970s or third in 1995. The country’s FDI stock only grew 500 percent, which is less than half the average of its peers, to $97.7 billion in 2017.

That is despite boasting the largest population after Indonesia of the four countries.

As a percentage of GDP, Mexico’s FDI stock in 2017 was 49.5 percent compared to 12 percent in 1995, while Indonesia’s FDI stock was 24.4 percent compared to 8.4 percent.

Turkey’s FDI stock as a percentage of GDP was 22.8 percent in 2017 compared to 6.4 percent in 1995.

Nigeria saw a much smaller jump in FDI stock as a percentage of GDP, implying less progress compared to the others, as it went from 12.3 percent of GDP in 1995 to 24 percent in 2017.

In terms of recent FDI inflows, Indonesia ranks top with FDI inflows of $28.2 billion in 2019. That excludes inflows to the banking and oil sectors Mexico follows with $26 billion. In third place is Turkey, which attracted $8.4 billion in FDI.

Nigeria attracted less than $1 billion.