Benin GDP growth to slow to 5.5 percent on Nigeria woes - IMF

Economic growth in Benin will ease to 5.5 percent this year and in 2016 due to a sharp slowdown in its giant West African neighbour Nigeria linked to falling oil prices, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast. 

Lagarde, IMF chief

“This is a moderate slowdown compared to 2014, due to negative spillovers from Nigeria - Benin’s main trading partner," Christine Dieterich, who headed a recent IMF mission to Benin, said in a statement released late on Tuesday.
Inflation in the cotton producer, which is a member of the eight-nation CFA franc zone, is projected at 2 percent next year, the statement said.
With oil exports accounting for 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and about 70 percent of government revenues, Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, has been hit hard by a rapid drop in global crude prices since last year.
Annual growth fell to 2.35 percent from 6.54 percent a year earlier, according to second quarter data released by the Nigerian Bureau of Sta

tistics last month.