Nigeria’s economy is expected to expand at a slower rate this year than in 2011, data showed on Tuesday, due to disruptions to oil production and ongoing weakness in developed countries that buy crude from Africa’s largest producer.

Nigeria’s economy is expected to grow 6.5 percent year-on-year in 2012, down from 7.4 percent in 2011, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

“The projected lower economic growth in 2012 could be partially attributed to external shocks from existing growth concerns in the US, Euro-area, and China,” the NBS said in its 2012-2015 economic outlook report.

“Lower economic growth could also result from possible lower domestic crude oil production due to supply disruptions, which have recently been on the increase.”

GDP growth was expected to average 8 percent in 2013, 7.43 percent in 2014 and 7.25 percent in 2015.

Inflation was expected to average 13.6 percent this year, up from 10.6 percent recorded in 2011, the data showed.

“Inflation is expected to trend up mostly due to the lingering effects of the partial removal of the fuel subsidy on food and non-food prices as a result of higher transportation costs,” the NBS documents said.

It predicted inflation could rise even more sharply if the government fully removed costly fuel import subsidies.

The NBS said its projections were calculated using the Bayesian vector autoregressive approach, which takes into consideration prior economic performance between 1996-2011.