How Close Are We To Getting Out Of Recession?

I think we are already coming out.

image: post-nigeria.com

The positive signs are convincing. The foreign reserve has been rising for weeks now. The stock market has been rising consistently lately. The international rating bodies are optimistic and favourable in their most recent ratings. The growth projections for next year are all positive and, mostly, above 2%.

Despite the expected and eventual rise in the US fed rate and the damaging effect it has had on emerging market securities and bonds, ours has grown. It's the vacation and Christmas season, and things are not heating up. Expectedly, though, the parallel market exchange rate is experiencing some heat. There will always be people who have saved up and planned big on a foreign vacation, and no amount of economic recession will hold them back. 

The recession and its impact has been a big surprise to everyone this year. Especially, the government who struggled with accepting it is real. They went from saying there was no recession to recession is just a word. Also a lot of people got hit hard. Businesses closed down. Some industries almost wiped out; airline industry especially. Sadly, a lot of companies laid off staff. 

Just a year ago, no one would have thought something of this magnitude could happen. We all knew things were not at their rosiest but never expected it this bad.

I had to read up on countries that had passed through this phase recently. I learned a lot and discovered that some of the government policies to take us out of this recession are well thought out and not as haphazard as most of us think. And all those countries got out of recession in one to two years. And some of them had it worse than us.

I am confident that we are very close to coming out of the recession. It's not an emotion based confidence or positive thinking, it is one rooted in facts. Most of the indices indicate we are already on the exit route and making progress.