World Bank says 5.6 million Nigerians will fall into poverty due to high inflation

By Favour Nnabugwu

 

The World Bank has said that the drivers of Nigeria’s inflation rate are unique to the nation alone as it differs from what is experienced in other parts of the world. The report also claimed 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.”

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.” Nairametrics saw a copy of the Standard Bank Group report detailing the remarks.

Nairametrics has often reported 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 in 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.”

They spoke about other issues as well, such as Nigeria’s forex (FX) situation, fuel subsidy and Nigeria’s debt status. See highlights below