The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Zainab Ahmed, says from the report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Nigerian economy is doing better than expected.
Dr Ahmed said this on Wednesday while briefing State House reporters on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
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It comes a day after NBS released inflation figures for August as 13.2%, the highest in two years.
The minister said measures were being put in place to stabilise the economy and ensure that it continues to run despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said: “We presented a memo to council in respect of the second quarter GDP report, earlier released by the National Bureau of Statistics on the 24th of August.
“Why the memo is so dated is because there was a retreat last week and we couldn’t get scheduled as well. Still for us, the information is important and topical.
“The GDP report shows that the economy went into negative growth of -6.10% in the second quarter but that the aggregate performance for half year 2020 is -2.1%. This performance of -6.10% is a good performance in the sense that it is better than what we have projected second quarter performance to be at -7.2%.
“This performance also is a good performance because it outperformed the projections that had been done by the Brentwood institutions. But it also outperformed very developed economies of the world and also economies that are comparable to us.
“The US for example went into negative growth of 33% for the second quarter 2020 and 19% half year 2020. Similarly, the UK, Canada, Italy and several countries of the world all went into very significant negative growth.
“So, Nigeria’s economy has shown some level of resilience in this level of performance.