Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has listed increased revenue, improved productivity through value addition, exchange rate management, and tackling inflation as the macro-economic measures that must be taken to sustain the growth of the country’s economy.
Prof. Osinbajo stated this on Monday in Abuja during the 28th edition of the Nigeria Economic Summit where he represented President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Vice President also spoke on the effect on the economy of climate change, the impact of emerging technologies and innovations and social investments.
He said the Nigerian economy has continued to improve with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at 3.54% in the 2nd quarter of this year, adding that non-oil revenues have similarly continued to grow due in part to strategic revenue initiatives including the annual Finance Act.
Pointing out that it’s the country’s revenue challenges that have heightened the notion that Nigeria has a debt-to-GPD ratio problem; he said increasing revenues would remain the focus of the government.
“We have already seen real improvements in our non-oil revenues but our focus must now be on productivity or encouraging value addition.
“Productivity and value addition means creation of traceable value, it means jobs, and opportunities and it means more tax revenues.”
While stating that the exchange rate remains a concern for the government, Osinbajo called for a mechanism for “Increasing supply and moderating demand which will be transparent and will boost confidence.
“I am sure most can recall several efforts have been made in the past such as the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market, Retail Dutch Auction System, Wholesale Dutch Auction System, etc.
“While they may not have been perfect, the rules were clear and the gap between the official and parallel markets was not so wide.
“The thing is that there should be some element of price discovery in our policy regime. This will boost confidence and increase inflows of foreign exchange.”
According to Vice President Osinbajo, there is a need for urgent action to bring inflation down because it is both a tax on the poor and disrupts long-term growth.
“Inflation in Nigeria is partly structural arising from infrastructural deficiencies etc but there is also an aspect that is caused by increased money supply, imported inflation and depreciation of the naira.
“In addition therefore to the monetary measures being taken by the Central Bank of Nigeria, we would need to increase domestic production of food because food inflation, as you know, is a major component of that basket that shows us exactly how and where inflation is headed.”
Agriculture
The Vice President said closer attention must be paid to the “Agriculture for Food and Jobs Programme,” which the country began to implement as part of the Economic Sustainability Plan.
He said the programme sought to support small-scale farmers by guaranteeing uptake of their production by enabling bigger farmers, suppliers to manufacturing companies and commodity exchanges to support them across every stage of production.
“So the small-scale farmer is actually involved in the value chain where he is supported by larger farmers and we ensure that these farmers are given the right inputs through the small scale farmers and access to credit.”
Climate Change
Restating the call for just transition to zero carbon emission, Vice President Osinbajo insisted that African countries bear the brunt of climate change even though they are not responsible for global warming or possibly the least emitters of carbon.
“We must continue to call for a just transition that enables us to use our abundant resources to meet our energy need, especially for electricity and cooking.
“This will enable us to secure the resources needed for investment in natural gas as well as renewable source of energy.”
He said the move to end the funding of gas projects by multinational corporations would be detrimental to developing countries.
Emerging Technologies
Prof. Osinbajo said Nigeria should also leverage the emerging technologies offered by digitization to grow its economy.
He said that digitization has created a lot of opportunities that impact on nearly every facet of life and should be prioritized.
“But we are now on the cusp of the 4th Industrial Revolution resulting from the increasing economic viability of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data analytics, and blockchain technologies.
“We have already seen the impact of digitization in Fintech in Nigeria and the story of how our young people managed to create six unicorns in a period of two recessions is one that will continue to be told.”
Vice President Osinbajo said priority should be given to improvement of social safety programmes and investments in the country’s youth.
In her remarks, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed said the Nigerian government has made achievements since the Buhari administration came into office.
“These include transformational investments in infrastructure to restore our national railways and road networks.
“Completed projects will be complemented by ongoing investments in light rail, narrow and standard gauge rail; airport terminals also have been completed in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.”
The first Chairman of the NESG, Paschal Dozie called for among other things, legislative interventions in the exclusive, concurrent and residual lists of the constitution and review of the Land Use Act.
Dozie also said it is necessary to design a curriculum that would make education more functional and called for more to be done to secure the country.
The opening session of the 28th Nigeria Economic Summit also had a panel discussion, moderated by Amina Salisu and featuring Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed; an entrepreneur, Atedo Peterside and Prof. Osita Ogbu of the University of Nigeria.
PIAK
