WED OCT 15 2025-theGBJournal| The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its latest World Economic Outlook report published on Tuesday, revised upward Nigeria’s growth forecast to 3.9% in 2025 on what it describes as supportive domestic factors, including higher oil production.
The IMF also cited improved investor confidence, a supportive fiscal stance in 2026.
At the press conference to mark the launch of the report, the Chief of the IMF Research Department, Deniz Igan, said, ”for 2025, we now project Nigeria’s GDP growth at 3.9%, which is 0.5 percentage points higher than our earlier forecast.
We have also upgraded the 2026 growth projection by 0.9 percentage points to 4.2 per cent. In fact, the 2024 growth figure has also been revised upward to 4.1 per cent, which is 0.7 percentage points higher than previously estimated.”
The IMF noted Nigeria’s limited exposure to higher US tariffs, just as many other economies see significant downward revisions because of the changing international trade and official aid landscape.
Many low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa benefited from preferential access to the US market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which expired in September.
”Halting this preferential access is expected to have sizable negative effects, particularly on Lesotho and Madagascar,” the IMF said.
The lending institution meanwhile in its projection for sub-Saharan Africa growth, said the overall economic growth in the region is expected to remain
subdued, unchanged in 2025 from 4.1 percent in 2024, before picking up to 4.4 percent in 2026.
”This is an upward revision relative to the April 2025 WEO forecast by a cumulative 0.5 percentage point, but a downward revision of 0.1 percentage point compared with the October 2024 WEO.”
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