Niger economy is booming
2009-07-05 10:40
Lagos - Niger, a deeply impoverished and arid West African country, last year posted an impressive overall GDP growth rate of 9.5%, up from 3.3% the previous year.
It was one of the best performers on the continent last year, and the biggest jump, according to officials.
"It's the largest increase in Africa," Finance Minister Lamine Zene told AFP.
Last year's performance by a country ranked among the world's bottom five in terms of the UN human development index, outpaced even some of the region's economic powerhouses such as the oil-rich neighbour Nigeria which had a 6.6% growth.
Elsewhere on the continent, Rwanda was one of the few countries to have out-performed Niger, with an 11% growth rate according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) statistics.
Niger's record growth was driven by a robust performance by the agrarian sector in the vast country sitting on the edge of the Sahara desert.
Agriculture
"Despite the food and energy crises, and the global (economic) climate, we achieve this through exceptional income from surplus crops," said minister Zene.
Agriculture rakes in more than 40% of Niger's GDP.
Niger is an arid, drought-prone West African country where food shortages are common. Most of its 15 million inhabitants live along a narrow stretch of arable land on the country's southern border with Nigeria.
At the start of last year, the United Nations' International Fund for Agricultural Development extended $16m in loans and grants to help shore up rural communities in Niger and battle poverty.
By December 2008, agriculture authorities announced grain output had shot up 37 percent from its 2007 levels to 4.6 million tonnes.
Zene, who recently returned from an annual roundtable with the two Bretton Woods institutions, clutching a $40m budget aid deal from the World Bank, also attributed the exceptional growth to "good public accounts" performance.
Large mining projects
The taxman scored 113% while the customs duty collected 107% above their targets.
But the global financial downturn has forced the world's six largest uranium producer to revise its growth forecast downwards.
"Because of the global crisis, we have revised downwards our targets and expect a growth rate of between 3.5 and four percent. It is realistic and is already a lot," said Zene.
The World Bank this week said sub-Saharan Africa's growth rate would slow to a 20-year low of one percent in 2009, in contrast to an average 5.1%rate achieved in 2008 and six percent the previous year.
It is expected to rebound to 3.7%in 2010.
Niger's growth is expected, according to the IMF, to be sustained by large mining and infrastructure projects already under way.
Political problems
But the country, which has made significant progress in strengthening its economy in recent years, looks heading for a political crisis likely to impact negatively on those gains.
Niger President Mamadou Tandja is bidding to remain in power beyond the end of his term in December. He is planning a constitutional referendum in August to allow him to run for a third term - a move rejected by the Constitutional Court, the national electoral commission and parliament.
He has dissolved the constitutional court and parliament and is now running the country by decree.
His actions have attracted widespread condemnation including from the European Union and ex-colonial ruler France while the African Union is deeply concerned at his moves.
"The World Bank and other international donors may suspend critically needed aid programmes," Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst on Africa and the Middle East with the think tank Eurasia, told AFP.
"Also in a real serious impasse, Nigeria, Chad and other members of ECOWAS could blockade the landlocked country," added Spio-Garbrah.
The World Bank in 2006 agreed to slash Niger's debt by 67% under the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) programme. About 15 percent of the debt that was owed to the Paris Club of nations - Britain, France, Japan, Spain and the United States - was written off in 2004.