GDP: Nigeria’s financial sector expands by 23% in Q3 2021

  by Zainab Iwayemi

The Nigerian financial sector, which comprises of finance and insurance sectors recorded a growth rate of 23.23% in the third quarter of 2021.

This is according to GDP report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday.

The Financial sector, which is classified as financial institutions and insurance, comprises of finance and insurance sector with respective 90.53% and 9.47% contribution to the overall sector in the period under review.

Key highlights

• The growth recorded in the sector is higher by 20.02% points from the rate recorded during the same period in 2020 and up by 25.71% points from the rate recorded in the previous quarter.
• The contribution of finance and insurance to real GDP totaled 3.16%, which is higher than the contribution of 2.67% recorded in the third quarter of 2020 by 0.49% points, but lower than 3.72% recorded in Q2 2021 by 0.56% points.
• The sector’s contribution to the overall nominal GDP was 2.70% in Q3 2021, which is higher than the 2.46% it represented a year before and lower compared to the contribution of 3.21% it made in the preceding quarter.
• Overall, Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 4.03%(year-on-year) in real terms in the third quarter of 2021, depicting a positive growth over the last four quarters since the recession witnessed in 2020.