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The World Bank has projected that the number of poor people in Nigeria would increase from the current 90 million to about 100 million by 2022 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s economy.
The World Bank gave the projection during its Nigeria Development Update virtual event, which had the theme ‘Rising to the challenge: Nigeria’s COVID-19 response’.
The global bank stated that by 2022, about 11 million more Nigerians were expected to fall into poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Marco Hernandez, an economist with the bank, explained his presentation at the event, that before the COVID-19 pandemic, about two million Nigerians were expected to fall into poverty in 2020 as population growth outpaced economic growth.
“With the COVID-19, the recession is likely to push an additional 6.6 million Nigerians into poverty in 2020, bringing the total newly poor to 8.6 million this year,” Hernandez said.
“This implies an increase in the total number of the poor in Nigeria from about 90 million in 2020 to about 100 million in 2022. Northern states are more likely to be affected.”
The bank further cited having vulnerable employment, receiving fewer remittances, and being close to the poverty line as some of the factors that led to the poverty increase.
It said Nigeria’s economy had been hit hard by COVID-19, adding that in 2020, it recorded its deepest quarterly contraction since the 1980s.
The bank said job quality in Nigeria had worsened with more workers engaged in precarious work in the agricultural sector.
In terms of the portfolio size of the bank in Nigeria, the World Bank Country Director, Shubham Chaudhuri, said, “There are three different ways of looking at the size of our portfolio.
“The first is how much concessional finance. If you look at how much our board has approved in terms of this financing, in the middle of 2018, is about $7bn.” It added.
“Since then and up till now, they’ve approved another $3bn in terms of financing. So, that brings us to $10bn and then with the $1.5bn that’s being considered in December, it will take it to somewhere around $11.5bn. That’s what the board has approved.”
