Over 60 percent of Nigerians expect the nation’s economy to get weaker in the face of continued rise in inflation.
This is the highlight of the Q4’20 Inflation Attitude Survey Report carried out by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to the report, respondents, which are composed of 2070 households randomly selected across 207 areas across the country believed that the economy would end up weaker than Q3’20.
“The survey result showed that 60.8 per cent of the respondents believed that the economy would end up weaker, 8.4 per cent stated that it would be stronger, 12.8 per cent of the respondents believed it would make a little difference, while 17.9 per cent did not know.”
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The responses collected above shows that more than half of the respondents believed high inflation will affect the economy, this affirms the notion that high price in commodities impacts negatively on the economy.
Also, the trend in high inflation has influenced the expectation of the respondents who believed inflation would increase by 5%.
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“The median expectation of price changes over the next 12 months was that prices would inch up by 5.0 per cent. From the total responses, 66.7 per cent of the respondents expected prices to rise by at least 3 per cent over the next 12 months, 17.0 per cent expected prices to increase by more than 1 per cent, but less than 3 per cent. However, 15.1 per cent of the respondents were optimistic that prices over the next 12 months would either go down or remain the same.”
According to the responses above, the high inflation by 5% expected in the next 12 months implies a weaker economy in the next 12 months.