Nigeria to surpass south africa by 2025

Nigeria’s economy may overtake South Africa’s by 2025 to become the biggest on the continent as oil prices climb and consumer spending in Africa’s most populous nation expands, Morgan Stanley said.

Gross domestic product, which will probably reach $400 billion by the end of the decade, is forecast to increase 8.4 percent in 2011 and 8.5 percent in 2012, Andrea Masia and Michael Kafe, economists at Morgan Stanley in Johannesburg, wrote in an e-mailed report today.

Crude output in Africa’s biggest oil producer is estimated to climb 9.5 percent to 2.3 million barrels a day by 2012 from last year, while oil prices may average $113 a barrel over the next year, Morgan Stanley said. Rising wages and an increase in borrowing is also helping to boost consumer spending in a country of 150 million people, the bank said.

“The sources of output growth are broadening and accelerating, retail trade is vibrant and its financial markets are deepening,” Masia and Kafe wrote. “The economy is on a growth charge.”

Source: Bloomberg Business Week