The World Bank has said that higher inflation could send about 5.6 million Nigerians into poverty.
“Admittedly, higher inflation reduces purchasing power, translating into higher levels of poverty and, ultimately, insecurity. The IMF estimates that between 2020 and 2021, high inflation may drive 5.6 million Nigerians into poverty,” the report said.
In a recent Annual World Bank Group/IMF Meetings hosted by the Standard Bank Research Group, the World Bank Group’s Lead Economist for Nigeria and IMF’s mission team made the remark explaining that “Nigeria has one of the highest levels of inflation — but the drivers here differ from across the globe.”
Recall that Nigeria’s inflation rate challenges are supply-side driven, caused mostly by issues such as insecurity, border closure, supply chain and logistic gridlocks, exchange rate volatility and other issues that are hard to solve with monetary policy alone.
They also blamed the border closure and food inflation as the main drivers of the rising inflationary trend recorded this year.
“Closed borders on Aug 19 caused inflation to shoot up, mainly driven by food inflation and, while inflation has been trending lower since Mar 21, it remains high due to FX liquidity difficulties, supply chain disruptions, and insecurity.”
The World Bank/IMF team also projected Nigeria’s annual growth at 2.6% for 2021 and 2.7% for 2022 citing that “Oil production should improve, with the oil sector expected to recover in the medium term.”
