FACT-CHECK: Verifying President Muhammadu Buhari’s claims in 2019 budget speech
Babatunde Akintunde
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, December 19, presented the 2019 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly.
In his speech, he made a number of claims and quoted statistics, while reviewing economic developments over the past three and a half years.
Most of the figures claimed are being examined by PREMIUM TIMES and DUBAWA, to verify the level of correctness. It must, however, be noted that many of assertions made on expenditure are difficult to verify as there are no documents in the public space to verify.
This is the reason we have had to tag some of the claims as “unproven” due to lack of data.
We will, however, keep researching to update this work in the coming days.
The president made the following claims in his presentation:
First claim: The economy has recovered from recession and we have had six quarters of growth since then. Real Gross Domestic Product growth stood at 1.81 per cent in the third quarter of 2018, compared to 1.17 per cent in the third quarter of 2017.
We have had a sustained accretion to foreign exchange reserves from a low of $28.57 billion in May 2015 to $42.92 billion by mid-December 2018.
This has contributed to exchange rate stability and will provide a buffer against any unanticipated external shocks. Inflation has also declined from a peak of 18.72 per cent in January 2017 to 11.28 per cent in November this year.
Verification: When did Nigeria exit recession?
Babatunde Akintunde
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, December 19, presented the 2019 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly.
In his speech, he made a number of claims and quoted statistics, while reviewing economic developments over the past three and a half years.
Most of the figures claimed are being examined by PREMIUM TIMES and DUBAWA, to verify the level of correctness. It must, however, be noted that many of assertions made on expenditure are difficult to verify as there are no documents in the public space to verify.
This is the reason we have had to tag some of the claims as “unproven” due to lack of data.
We will, however, keep researching to update this work in the coming days.
The president made the following claims in his presentation:
First claim: The economy has recovered from recession and we have had six quarters of growth since then. Real Gross Domestic Product growth stood at 1.81 per cent in the third quarter of 2018, compared to 1.17 per cent in the third quarter of 2017.
We have had a sustained accretion to foreign exchange reserves from a low of $28.57 billion in May 2015 to $42.92 billion by mid-December 2018.
This has contributed to exchange rate stability and will provide a buffer against any unanticipated external shocks. Inflation has also declined from a peak of 18.72 per cent in January 2017 to 11.28 per cent in November this year.
Verification: When did Nigeria exit recession?
