Economics

Nigeria's First-Quarter GDP Slows After Oil Sector Contracts

  • Oil industry declined 2.4% from a year earlier, agency says
  • Economy expanded 2.01% compared with 2.6% Bloomberg estimate
Photographer: Tom Saater/Bloomberg
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Nigeria’s economic growth slowed in the first quarter after the oil sector, the country’s biggest foreign-exchange earner, contracted.

Gross domestic product in Africa’s largest oil producer expanded by 2.01% in the three months through March from a year earlier, the Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics said in a report published on its website Monday. That compares with 2.4% expansion in the fourth quarter. The median estimate of five economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for growth of 2.6%.