Impact of International Trade on Economic Growth in Nigeria: An approach of time series Econometric Model

This study examined the impact of international trade on economic growth in Nigeria. Specifically, the study intends to: (i) examine the impact of international trade on economic growth in Nigeria, (ii) ascertain the causality relationship between export, import, trade openness, exchange rate, foreign interest and economic growth in Nigeria. The study employed the OLS regression models to obtain its data. For test of stationality, the study employed the Augmented Dickey-Fuller co-integration test which shows that GDP, Trade openness and export were all stationary at level while the Import and Exchange rate were stationary at first difference. Also, Autoregressive Distributive Lag Model (ARDL) was employed to test for the existence of long run equilibrium relationship. Summary of the findings showed that: the coefficient of the proxies for international trade has positive and significant impact on real GDP (RGDP) (F – statistics (14.56916) > its critical value (1.694), and there is bilateral cause-effect relationship between international trade and economic growth in Nigeria. The study concluded that international trade has positive significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria within the period of 1980-2019. The study recommended that government should start and sustain export promotion strategy by the means of income or profit tax exemption, credit subsidies, duty drawbacks and duty exemption and marketing and institutional support.