Nigeria will seek stronger international financial support at this week’s\u00a0IMF-World Bank \u200cSpring Meetings\u00a0as the\u00a0Iran war\u00a0lifts fuel costs at home and complicates reforms, its finance minister said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Surging crude prices had some clear benefits for Africa’s \u200btop oil producer, boosting foreign exchange earnings, Wale Edun said in \u200ba statement ahead of this week’s meetings in Washington.<\/p>\n
“But the \u2060shock comes at a critical transition point, intensifying inflationary pressures and \u200braising living costs for households,” he added.<\/p>\n
Petrol prices have surged more than \u200b50% to 1,330 naira ($0.9788) per litre – and diesel more than 70% to 1,550 naira a litre – since the start of the conflict, hurting people and businesses, Edun said.<\/p>\n
The jolting \u200bchange threatened to derail reforms launched in 2023 to\u00a0stabilise the economy\u00a0\u200band revive growth.<\/p>\n
President Bola Tinubu has rolled out Nigeria’s most ambitious economic overhaul in \u200cdecades \u2060by ending costly fuel and energy subsidies, devaluing the currency and changing the tax system.<\/p>\n
At this week’s meetings, Edun, who chairs the G24 group of developing countries, said he planned to push for lower borrowing costs, \u200bfairer global financial conditions \u200band more \u2060support for countries pursuing reforms.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s benchmark Bonny Light crude grade climbed from about $70\u2013$73 a barrel before the conflict \u200bto current levels above $120, the government said.<\/p>\n
Inflation eased sharply \u200bto 15.06% \u2060in February from around 33% in December 2024, but remains high compared with regional peers and has come under renewed pressure since the conflict began, \u2060the \u200bWorld Bank said last week.<\/p>\n
Edun said the \u200bgovernment would focus on attracting private investment, creating jobs and sustaining growth, while shielding vulnerable households \u200bfrom rising prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria will seek stronger international financial support at this week’s\u00a0IMF-World Bank \u200cSpring Meetings\u00a0as the\u00a0Iran war\u00a0lifts fuel costs at home and complicates reforms, its finance minister said on Monday. Surging crude prices had some clear benefits for Africa’s \u200btop oil producer, boosting foreign exchange earnings, Wale Edun said in \u200ba statement ahead of this week’s meetings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,27],"tags":[1097,175,1184],"class_list":["post-20496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-west-africa","tag-imf","tag-nigeria","tag-world-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20497,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496\/revisions\/20497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}