Managing the Nigerian Economy through Fiscal Deficit

Abstract

This study examined how fiscal deficit, exchange rate, and inflation rate impacted the economic growth of the Nigerian economy from 1980 to 2019. The cointegration connection in the study was discovered using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test. The analysis found that, while inflation and the exchange rate have a positive and significant relationship with the Nigerian economy, the fiscal deficit has a negative but relatively insignificant effect on the country's GDP. The Nigerian government should stabilise the currency's external value and prevent it from falling in value in the short term. Such policies should be developed to encourage people to pay taxes while providing incentives to those who abide. The government should lower lender interest rates to boost small domestic investors to make investments and create jobs while increasing government revenue. Government agencies should reduce luxuries and wasteful spending to avoid a fiscal deficit.