Nigeria is seeing positive results from fiscal reforms — World Bank

The World Bank has said that Nigeria is seeing positive results from the economic reforms by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

World Bank’s lead economist, Alex Sienaert, said this during a presentation in Abuja on Thursday, October 17, 2024.

Sienaert said Nigeria’s fiscal deficit has reduced from 6.2 percent in the first half of last year to 4.4 percent in the first half of this year.

He said the reforms have led to robust growth in service sectors, stability in the oil sector, and improvements in the foreign exchange market.

According to him, “We are seeing a fiscal consolidation underway with the fiscal deficit shrinking from 6.2% of GDP in the first half of last year to 4.4% in the first half of this year and that’s driven by a combination of expenditure being roughly constant in real terms, and revenues which are surging.

This surge in revenues is largely due to the removal of the implicit FX subsidy that was happening before, which was even larger than the petrol subsidy, which we talk a lot about.”