BY FRANCIS EZEM

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, which has consistently presented growth rates below that of Nigeria’s government official figures, has stated that the Bretton Woods Institution’s figures are always more current than Nigeria’s.

Recall that there have been discrepancies twice this year alone, when the Nigerian government placed its growth projection at 3.5 per cent in the 2018 budget, while the IMF projected 2.5 per cent. However after the Nigerian government effected a cut on its projection down to the IMF’s level of 2.1 per cent, the IMF after its just concluded annual Meetings in Indonesia dropped the projection further to 1.9 per cent.

IMF director in charge of Africa, Mr. Abebe Selassie, who spoke to Financial Vanguard on the sidelines of the meetings, said the consistent discrepancies could be attributed to the gap in updating as the World Bank and IMF appear to be more current than Nigerian authorities.

“I think it is a matter of updating. We are always on the watch to update our projections following developments in the economy we watch. We are always current”.

However when reminded that Nigeria’s government also updates just like the 2018 projections, Selassie said that IMF’s update may be faster than Nigeria’s. But he also added that in the latest updates by the two entities the difference is not much. The latest update by IMF is 0.2 percentage point below Federal Government’s projection.

But the 2019 projections of IMF at 2.3 per cent is significantly below Federal Government’s figure of 3.01 per cent, which was also a downward review from 4.5 per cent contained in its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan ERGP document.