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· The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) recently approved a US$288.5 million loan to help Nigeria tackle theCOVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its impact on people and businesses
· The loan will supplement Nigeria’s efforts improvesurveillance on COVID-19 emergencies, ease the impact on workers andbusinesses and strengthen the social protection system
· The economy is expected to shrink between 4.4% and 7.2%under a conservative baseline scenario, if the pandemic persists tothe end-2020, according to experts.
The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) recently approved a US$288.5 million loan to help Nigeria tackle the
COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its impact on people and businesses. The loan will supplement Nigeria’s efforts to improve surveillance on COVID-19 emergencies, ease the impact on workers and businesses and strengthen the social protection system.
Nigeria is riddled with many domestic issues, apart from the negative impact of the pandemic, such as roiling of oil prices, inflation, unemployment and occasional eruption of law and order problems from the terrorist groups. The country has reported 11,516 coronavirus cases, 3,535 recoveries and 323 deaths as of June 5,2020.
Though it is the most industrialized country in Africa and mines out maximum quantum of crude both from onshore and offshore projects,
about 40.1% of Nigerians live below the poverty line of US$1.90 per day. The household income of this vulnerable group might have further dipped during the pandemic. Jobs, because of lockdown, are difficult to come through.
Nigeria’s economy was projected to grow by 2.9% of GDP in 2020 prior to the pandemic and the growth would have gone a notch above that to
3.3% in 2021. But such estimates have gone for a toss with the pandemic and the persistent slump in crude prices. The economy is expected to shrink between 4.4% and 7.2% under a conservative baseline scenario, if the pandemic persists to the end-2020, according to experts.
