EXCLUSIVE: IMF urges Nigeria to balance painful reforms with social investments.
Nigeria’s sweeping economic reforms have reignited investor confidence and earned praise from global institutions, but the toll on the nation’s poorest citizens has cast a shadow over the gains.
As Africa’s largest economy charts a new course towards fiscal stability, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has sounded a cautionary note — urging the government to cushion the reforms’ harshest impacts with targeted social investments.
During her first visit to Nigeria, Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, commended the government for implementing long-overdue measures such as the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market and the removal of fuel subsidies.
“The removal of fuel subsidies, while necessary, has exacerbated hardship for many Nigerians, with the poverty rate rising to 47% in 2024,” she said in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay. “The government needs to rechannel the savings from subsidy removal into social safety nets for vulnerable households.”
Although the rebasing of Nigeria’s inflation index by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) brought the official rate down to 24 percent in January 2025 from 34 percent in December 2024, the perception on the streets tells a different story.
Source: BUSINESSDAY
