ICT sector growth drops to 16.35% – NBS

The information and communications technology sector contributed 16.35 per cent to Nigeria’s real Gross Domestic Product in the third quarter of 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

This marked a decline from the 19.78 per cent contribution recorded in the previous quarter but shows an improvement from the 15.97 per cent reported during the same period last year.

The NBS report, released recently, highlighted that the ICT sector encompasses telecommunications and information services; publishing; motion pictures, sound recording, and music production; and broadcasting.

Despite the quarterly drop, the sector posted a 5.92 per cent year-on-year growth in real terms, driven primarily by the telecommunications sub-sector, which alone contributed 13.94 per cent to the GDP.

The ICT sector also accounted for 11.30 per cent of Nigeria’s total nominal Gross Domestic Product in Q3 2024, a decline from the 14.19 per cent recorded in the preceding quarter and slightly lower than the 11.57 per cent posted during the same period in 2023.

In nominal terms, the sector’s growth was recorded at 14.51 per cent year-on-year, representing a sharp decrease of 25.75 percentage points from the 40.27 per cent growth rate reported in Q3 2023. However, this was 2.65 percentage points higher than the growth rate seen in the previous quarter.

Overall, the country’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.46 per cent year-on-year in real terms during the third quarter of 2024.

This signaled a notable increase from the 2.54 per cent growth recorded in the corresponding period of 2023 and an improvement from the 3.19 per cent growth observed in the second quarter of 2024.

Part of the report read, “Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.46 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2024. This growth rate is higher than the 2.54 per cent recorded in the third quarter of 2023 and higher than the second quarter of 2024 growth of 3.19 per cent.

“The performance of the Gross Domestic Product in the third quarter of 2024 was driven mainly by the services sector, which recorded a growth of 5.19 per cent and contributed 53.58 per cent to the aggregate Gross Domestic Product.”