By Elisha Bala-Gbogbo
ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s economy gained pace in the fourth quarter of 2024, growing at its fastest in three years driven mainly by its services sector, data showed on Tuesday.
Gross domestic product grew 3.84% in annual terms, more than the 3.46% reported in the third quarter of 2024, the 3.19% seen in the second quarter and 2.98% in the first.
Fourth-quarter growth was led by the services sector which grew 5.37% year-on year, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Full-year growth accelerated to 3.40% last year from 2.74% in 2023, it said.
The growth rate, however, is still short of the 6% target set by President Bola Tinubu when he took office in mid-2023 in Africa’s most populous nation.
Nigeria plans to rebase its GDP data to better reflect the current economic landscape after doing the same for its Consumer Price Index.
The rebasing aims to account for growth in sectors, such as the marine economy, arts, culture and tourism, information and communication technology, and e-commerce, all of which have expanded significantly since the last rebasing in 2014.
That adjustment helped Nigeria leapfrog South Africa to become Africa’s largest economy, but it has since fallen back due to naira devaluations under Tinubu’s leadership.
Tinubu implemented bold reforms in the first months of his administration to try to finally unleash the country’s full economic potential.
Last year the World Bank said Nigeria was beginning to reap the benefits of the policy reforms.
Average daily oil output was 1.54 million barrels per day in the final three months of 2024, little changed from 1.56 million a year earlier, the data showed.
Growth in agriculture was 1.76%, while industrial output expanded 2.00%.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts Nigeria’s economy will grow 3.2% this year.
(Reporting by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Alexander Winning and Tomasz Janowski)
