Report

Nigeria Economic Update Issue 35

The first article is titled: ‘Fall in GDP growth rate’. It discusses Nigeria’s economy which performed poorly and witnessed a second consecutive quarter of weakened growth as real GDP slowed to a year-on-year growth rate of 1.94% in the second quarter of 2019. The rate is lower than the revised 2.1% growth rate reported for the previous quarter (2019Q1) and particularly underlines slow paced growth in the non-oil sector. The second article is titled: ‘Introduction of VAT on online transactions’. The article speaks about justifying the potentially untapped tax base which exists in the non-oil revenue generation, the Nigerian government has proposed an imposition of 5% VAT on all domestic and international online transactions. In the third article: ‘Business Outlook’ the overall business outlook and optimism in the macroeconomy which improved marginally in August 2019 is discussed. At 28.6 index points, businesses expressed optimism in the macroeconomy, up slightly from the reported 28.1 index points in the previous month, July. On page 4 there is an economic snapshot which provides monthly and quarterly indicator figures regarding e.g. the GDP growth etc.