Chiamaka Ajeamo

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has listed the late passage of the 2019 budget, sluggish investment decisions and several other factors may arise after the general elections among key issues that will moderate Nigeria’s growth prospects in 2019.

The President of ICAN, Alhaji Rasak Jaiyeola, while speaking at the institute’s economic discourse series ‘2019 economic outlook’ in Lagos, observed that growth prospects for Nigeria may be moderated with the likely late passage of the 2019 budget, and sluggish investment decisions that may arise as a result of expectations from the general elections. He further noted that security challenges in the country, projected relatively low crude oil prices in the global market and other uncertainties that may come with the general elections and developments in other trading economies with the country as some of the issues that could determine the extent the countr’s economy could go.

Jaiyeola revealed that, for 2019, there are divergent views on the growth prospects across countries and regions. While the projections for some are encouraging, others have been predicted to experience some downward spiralling in the year. He further noted that the World Economic Outlook by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), projects a global growth of 3.5 percent in 2019 and 3.6 percent in 2020. These represent 0.2 and 0.1 percentage point below the 3.7 percent average growth in 2018. 

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The ICAN boss added that in sub-Saharan Africa, growth is expected to pick up from about 3.1 percent in 2018 to 3.8 percent in 2019. However, this would still be a far cry from what was needed to stimulate the expected jobs creation to meet the demand of a growing population in the region. He declared.

Also speaking, the guest speaker, Chief Executive Officer, Economic Associates, Dr. Ayo Teriba, said, Nigeria’s major economic problem was lack of liquidity and not growth or stability. Teriba noted that the world aside Nigeria is facing a liquidity glut adding that the country needs to build up domestic liquidity defense in order to regain countercyclical monetary policy capacity.

“Low liquidity is the major financial problem facing Nigeria. To close this gap is to get liquidity both externally and internally. Also, Nigeria must strategically deepen the financing buckets in the economy which are; banks, bond equity and foreign exchange”, he pointed out.