 Welcome back. Now the International Monetary Fund and its most recent edition of the World Economic Outlook lower its global growth forecast for this year and next. According to its baseline growth forecast the global economy is expected to grow by 2.8% in 2023 from 3.4% in 2022 before recovering to 3.0% in 2024. Now these compare with its previous forecast of 2.9% and 3.1% for 2023 and 2024 respectively in its January 2023 WEO update. I am now being joined by International Finance and Economics Analyst Mukta Mohamed. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insights. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure always. All right. Let us just start by the figures that were released by IMF. Now this is the weakest growth profile since 2001 except for the global financial crisis and the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic but just how did we get to these low projections? I think like you said it right and rightly we're coming out from COVID then we thought that was the worst that could happen then the Russian-Ukrain crisis came in and I think that has been the game changer as far as the economy of the world is concerned because it came out with a lot of destruction to the economy especially to the developing nation. Energy went up and also affected the developed nation also and so we saw the agricultural sector also shrink. Remember Ukraine is the largest exporter of green to every part of the world. So Russia is the largest exporter of gas to European Union countries also. A lot of issues that came out because of the crisis especially the Russian-Ukrain crisis boiled down to then with that came the snowball effect of inflation, global inflexional pressure because of demands and supply and then also the high cost of energy especially oil price went up to above $100 just trying to stay there now and with that study you saw OPEC also cutting them output also to make sure that they maintain price between $80 and $90 per barrel. So I'm not surprised about what we are seeing especially with what the IMF have said it's something that definitely all of us know would definitely happen to the economy and we don't expect a quick rebound of the economy at the moment especially when there seems to be no headway in bringing Russia and Ukraine to the peace table. Right now with the forecast that is expected to slow from 6.2 or 6.0 percent in 2020, 2021 to 3.2 in 2020 and this year we are having a much lower percentage in 2023 that is 2.7 percent. With all of this what is the implication for Africa and indeed Nigeria? For Africa it's not good news you know because Africans have not been doing trade with themselves that much trade within themselves and so what we're seeing that a lot of African currency have been in value incomparable to euro or to pounds or to so we are seeing weaker currency especially from African nation we are seeing high depths from African nations also all these are part of what is affecting them African and structurally you know Africa also has its challenges that have to deal with cost of production because the higher even the countries the African countries that are among the producer of crude seems not to be African countries seem not to be getting this crude from them because of logistics so Africans are still getting their crude from the from the Middle East also so all this is affecting Africa generally. Then for Nigeria you need to look at inflation appraisal that has to do because a lot of our goods and services are imported into this country but I think the greatest concern for Nigeria at this moment is the inflation figure and also this is boiled down to one effect high cost of production high cost of energy and also high cost of petroleum product all this it comes in why then again must not forget our debt burden especially that we've not been able to attract foreign direct investor into the country and another major challenge that we are coping after inflation is our currency devaluation because by the day our currency seems to be struggling because we are not able to earn so much to even defend our currency like we normally do before because what we earn in terms of high crude energy high crude price we lose in terms of payment of subsidy for refined petroleum. All right Mokta as we round off sorry to bought it as we round off because of time you know with all of these projections and them effect on Africa and indeed Nigeria what curbs can the country do since it is actually planning on you know stopping fuel subsidy in June with all of these predictions now what curbs should Nigeria be putting in place as we look towards and getting a very viable economy for 2023 very quickly please. We need to do a structural adjustment and like you said the first thing is to look at the subsidy regime whether it's workable how much do we really have to spend on subsidy there we also look need to look at the non oil exports we need to improve upon it and we need to look at our capital our competitive advantage on that sector if we are able to do that too and then basically the major major thing I'm expecting the new administration to do is how can you how can you attract foreign direct investment and portfolio investment into the country then remove subsidy with that also begin to attract a lot of effects into the economy once we are able to stabilize the interest the foreign exchange market then we begin to see good and services begin to come down because then the manufacturer's order will begin to assess effects at a fixed rate both markedly determined with both in the official and parallel market once we are able to do this I think our economy will recover and I think we should be thinking towards that in the short term and in the long term we need to be thinking of quality that are going to touch both the rich and the poor all right thank you so much Mok Tao for all of the insights that you have you know given to us concerning the issues that are plaguing the world's economy this year would you appreciate your time and of course like you always do on the show thank you so much thank you and that's the size of the show for today I am Justin at Cadone Business Insights return same time tomorrow half past nine bye for now