IMF: Nigeria’s 2025 economic growth to decline to 3.0%

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that Nigeria’s economic growth will decline to 3.0 per cent in 2025.

The IMF attributed the reduction to falling global crude oil prices.

The IMF also projected that global growth will decline to 2.8 per cent in 2025, as significant policy shifts continue to unfold across the world.

The projection was contained in the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update for April 2025, released on Tuesday.

According to the IMF, the rapid escalation of trade tensions and exceptionally high levels of policy uncertainty are expected to significantly impact global economic activity.

It noted that, following a series of unprecedented shocks in recent years, global growth remained stable but lackluster in 2024, and was already projected to remain subdued in the January 2025 WEO Update.

However, it said the landscape had changed as governments around the world reordered policy priorities.

The IMF said since the release of the January 2025 WEO Update, a series of new tariff measures by the United States and countermeasures by its trading partners had been announced and implemented.

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“This has ended up in near-universal US tariffs on April 2 and bringing effective tariff rates to levels not seen in a century. This on its own is a major negative shock to growth,” it stated.

The IMF said for Sub-Saharan Africa,  growth is also expected to drop from 4.0 per cent in 2024 to 3.8 in 2025 and recover modestly to 4.2 in 2026.

“Among the larger economies, the growth forecast in Nigeria is revised downward by 0.2 percentage point for 2025 and 0.3 percentage point for 2026, owing to lower oil prices,” the IMF added.

It said global headline inflation was  expected to decline at a pace that was slightly slower than what was expected in January, reaching 4.3 per cent in 2025 and 3.6 per cent in 2026.

“For advanced economies there will be notable upward revisions and slight downward revisions for emerging markets and developing economies in 2025,” it stated.

The Star