By Etim Etim
In the middle of last month, specifically February 12, 2019, when the nation was engrossed in the preparations for the national elections, the National Bureau of Statistics released the Fourth Quarter economic performance report for 2018. I was not totally surprised that our media, always fascinated by politics and its drama, did not report this sterling economic performance prominently. The report shows the strongest performance since the nation emerged from recession in 2017. The report highlights that GDP grew by 2.7% in the last quarter of 2018, and 39 out of 46 economic activities are now growing. Agriculture and manufacturing recorded strong growth, while services recorded its best performance in 11 Quarters. For the full year 2018, real GDP stood at 1.93% higher than 0.82% in 2017. It is notable that the performance of Real GDP has continued to be driven by the non-oil sector which grew by 2.70% in Q4 2018 up from 2.32% in Q3 2018,…
