In spite of the slower pace of economic activities in the first quarter of the year (Q1, 2021), GDP grew by 0.51 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.
The NBS said this in the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report for Q1 2021, released on its website on Sunday in Abuja.
The bureau said this marked two consecutive quarters of growth, following negative growth rates recorded in the second and third quarters of 2020.
consecutive quarters of growth, following negative growth rates recorded in the second and third quarters of 2020.
It said the Q1 2021 growth rate was slower than the 1.87 percent growth rate recorded in Q1 2020 but higher than 0.11 percent recorded in Q4 2020, indicative of a slow but continuous recovery.
“Nevertheless, quarter-on-quarter, real GDP grew at -13.93 percent in Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2020, reflecting a generally slower pace of economic activities at the start of the year.”
The NBS said that in the quarter under review, aggregate GDP stood at N40.01 trillion in nominal terms.
It added that this performance was higher when compared to the first quarter of 2020 which recorded aggregate GDP of N35.64 trillion, indicating a year-on-year nominal growth rate of 12.25 percent.
Also, the nominal GDP growth rate in Q1 2021 was higher, relative to 12.01 percent growth recorded in the first quarter of 2020 as well as the 10.07 percent growth recorded in the preceding quarter.
The NBS classified the Nigerian economy into oil and non-oil sectors.
For the oil sector, in Q1, average daily oil production stood at 1.72 million barrels per day (mbpd).
This was lower than the average daily production of 2.07mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2020 by 0.35mbpd but higher than the production volume of 1.56mbpd recorded in Q4 2020.
It added that the real growth of the oil sector was –2.21 percent (year-on-year) in Q1, indicating a decrease of –7.27 percent relative to the growth rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2020.
