The country’s economy shrank by a record -6.10% in the second quarter of this year, the largest in a decade, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday.
It is considered the biggest shrinkage in the economy in a decade, and worsened by the blowback from the coronavirus pandemic.
The shrinkage in gross domestic product ends a three-year trend of low but positive real growth rate recorded since the last recession in 2016/2017.
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The NBS largely attributed the economic contraction to “significantly lower levels of both domestic and international economic activity during the quarter, which resulted from nationwide shutdown efforts aimed at containing the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Restrictions were placed on human and vehicular movements initially in a few states.
They later broadened into a nationwide curfew, bans on domestic and international travel, and closure of schools and markets.
NBS says all of it affected both local and international trade.
“The efforts, led by both the Federal and State governments, evolved over the course of the quarter and persisted throughout,” the NBS said in the report.
Daily Trust observed that when compared with the second quarter, 2019, which recorded a growth of 2.12 percent, the second quarter, 2020 growth rate indicates a drop of –8.22 percent points, and a fall of –7.97 percent points when compared to the first quarter of 2020 (1.87 percent).
Consequently, for the first half of 2020, real GDP declined by –2.18 percent year on year, compared with 2.11 percent recorded in the first half of 2019.
Meanwhile, quarter on quarter, real GDP decreased by –5.04 percent.
Furthermore, only 13 activities recorded positive real growth compared to 30 in the preceding quarter.
Analysis of the report showed that non-oil GDP contracted by -6.05 percent from 1.55 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and 1.64 percent in the second quarter of 2019.
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