The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has attributed its successful forecast of a 14 per cent inflation by the end of the year to a painstaking analysis of President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies in the last year.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Omoniyi Akinsiju, the IMPI said that while the President projected an ambitious 15 per cent inflation rate in his 2025 budget speech, its analysts were convinced in September that the country would do better using a Predictive Regression (PR) analysis.
IMPI said: “When in September we initially projected a drop in inflation by the end of 2025 to 17 per cent, it was based on a trend analysis of the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) reports issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) since the beginning of the year in relation to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) reports of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
“But we were forced to review our position downwards, barely a month later, in our policy statement 031 issued in October, when we established a stronger pattern of increased productivity and general price reduction with higher intensity beginning from August 2025.”
“So, with the benefit of a new set of data available to us via the Predictive Regression (PR) model of statistical analysis, we concluded that a 14 per cent inflation rate was a more realistic figure before the end of the year than the earlier projected 17 per cent.
“We were able to establish a consistent pattern of increased productivity and general price reduction with higher intensity beginning from August 2025.
”After establishing a link between an increasing purchasing managers’ index with the disinflation trend in the country, our analysts at IMPI noted that ‘the trend in the relationship and movements between the PMI and inflation is further sustained by their respective October figures with the CBN Composite PMI recording 55.4 index points, a significant increase in the PMI recorded between April and September 2025. This larger margin of difference is also reflected in the country’s headline inflation rate, which declined at a much faster rate to 16.50 per cent in October 2025 from 18.02 per cent in September 2025, a decrease of 1.96 per cent.’
“To put this in context, an increase in PMI reflects a decline in inflation because a PMI hike is suggestive of a higher growth momentum in production and productivity measured across 36 sectors of the economy.
“We were, therefore, not surprised that the headline inflation dropped for the eighth consecutive month in November to 14.45 per cent by nearly 200 basis points on the back of stable macroeconomics.”
However, the think-tank is optimistic that the trend will continue into next year if the administration does not waver from its policies, which are now bearing fruit after a slow start.
The IMPI said that a blend of monetary, fiscal and structural policies was required to consolidate recent gains and ensure that more Nigerians experience the impact of the ongoing Tinubu reforms.
It expressed optimism that the disinflationary trend would persist well into 2026, noting that the Federal Government had finalised plans to deploy the 2,000 tractors acquired from Belarus to farms nationwide beginning in January 2026.
