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, IMPI argued that while the President himself projected an ambitious 15% 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 percent it was based on a trend analysis of the Purchasing Manager’s 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 Manager’s 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.”
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.
”As many have posited, a combination of monetary, fiscal and structural policies is necessary to consolidate the gains of the trend with a view to ensuring that more Nigerians feel the effects of the ongoing Tinubu reforms.
”We are, however, optimistic that the disinflation trend will continue deep into 2026 now that the federal government has concluded plans to move the 2,000 tractors acquired from Belarus into farms across the country from January.
”It is gratifying that rather than distribute the tractors to individuals, they are to be allocated through a transformative mechanisation service-provider model designed to ensure that each tractor covers a minimum of 500 hectares of farmland, meaning that all tractors can cultivate a combined 100,000 hectares while serving millions of farmers.
”Indeed, things have changed from the high inflationary environment of 2024 as 2025 winds down. The economy has transmuted to a vastly improved one with more Nigerians more likely to be wheeled out of poverty as a result of the ongoing disinflation in the economic space”, it added.
