Hope for economic recovery in the near future is elongated as the oil production shortfalls that have largely contributed to slow Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is expected to extend to the next three years.
The situation was confirmed on Wednesday by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed recently, at a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held in Abuja. According to the draft copy of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework 2023-2025, which was approved by the minister, the federal government has projected that the oil sector’s contribution to GDP will decline between 2023 and 2025 to five per cent.
The oil sector has increasingly faltered quarter-on-quarter, trailing other sectors of the economy in contribution to Nigeria’s GDP growth.
According to data published by the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in February 2022, the oil sector contribution to the Nigerian economy declined to 5.19 per cent at N1.055 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2021, down by 3.68 basis points, from the 5.87 per cent contribution in the corresponding period in 2020.
