Economy contracted as oil output declined from previous period IMF forecast Nigeria economy will shrink 1.8% in 2016 Nigeria’s economic slump deepened in the second quarter as a declining oil industry weighed on output. Gross domestic product in Africa’s most-populous country contracted by 2.1 percent in the three months through June from a year earlier, the Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday, after shrinking 0.4 percent in the first quarter. The median of 17 economist estimates compiled by Bloomberg was for a 1.6 percent contraction. Nigeria suffered a revenue squeeze after oil prices slumped by half since mid-2014, and crude exports fell by over 20 percent in the second quarter as militants in the Niger River delta blew up pipelines and reduced output. This was exacerbated by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s currency peg that led to a lack of dollars in the […]