Nigeria’s poverty rate should be falling faster given its economic growth this decade, an official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told reporters.

The share of citizens in Africa’s most populous country of more than 160 million, who are considered poor, fell to 62.6 per cent in 2010 from 64.2 per cent in 2004, figures published by the World Bank show.

The economy of Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, expanded an average 7.2 per cent a year during the same period, according to IMF estimates.

“It’s a bit of a conundrum,” W. Scott Rogers, the senior resident representative of the IMF in Nigeria, said in a May 16 interview in Abuja, the capital. “Income per capita has gone up yet poverty isn’t improving and we’re having a difficult time understanding why that is or how that could be.”

Economic growth has been largely driven by the non-oil industries, which expanded an average 8.5 per cent a year from 2003 to 2011, the IMF said in a May 10 report, citing figures from the Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics. Oil accounts for about 15 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Agriculture accounted for 48.7 per cent of the country’s non-oil economic output from 2001 to 2011, while wholesale and retail accounted for 21.4 per cent, according to the IMF.

Agriculture expanded an average 6.6 per cent a year, while wholesale and retail trade grew 12.2 per cent a year, according to the lender.

“This is one thing we’ve learned over the last decade or two, that it’s not just the rate of growth in the aggregate that matters, it’s where it’s coming from and who’s enjoying it,” said Rogers. Still, “in Nigeria the growth is everywhere.”