SAN FRANCISCO, September 06 (THEWILL) – The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday insisted that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is working, stressing that the results of that work are evident in the various sectors of the economy.
Asserting that Nigeria’s exit from recession was not by chance, he said the country came out of the economic downturn following months of hard work by the administration and fidelity to its well-articulated economic policies, particularly the strategic implementation of the Economic Recovery and the Growth Plan, ERGP, that was launched on April 5, 2017.
The minister, who stated this at the 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria, ACSPN, in Kano, disclosed that the high food prices are being addressed with appropriate monetary, fiscal and trade policies, as stated in the ERGP.
He listed some of the ‘’incrementally-positive steps’’ that got Nigeria out of recession as including the reversal of the consistent slowdown since 20014 to a level where the GDP finally grew by 0.55 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.
‘’This positive growth is attributable to both the oil and non-oil sectors of the economy. Growth in the oil sector, which has been negative since Q4 2015, was positive in Q2 2017. It rose by 1.64 per cent as compared to -15.60 in Q1 2017, an increase of up to 17 percentage points.
‘’The non-oil sector grew by 0.45 per cent in Q2 2017, a second successive quarterly growth after growing 0.72 per cent in Q1 2017. In particular, improvement in the non-oil sector was driven principally by strong growth in agriculture and solid minerals sector, and reversal in the previous contraction of the manufacturing and construction sector. This shows that the government’s economic diversification programme is working,’’ he said.
Mohammed listed other positive developments as the fall in the inflation rate from 18 per cent to 16 per cent as of July 2017; the rise in exports, coupled with a decrease in imports, which brought the country’s trade balance to ₦719.4 billion, up from ₦671.3 billion; increase in capital inflow that brought the total value of capital imported into Nigeria in the second quarter of 2017 to $1,792.3 million, representing a growth of 95.02 percent; increase in foreign reserves to a 30-month high of $31.8 billion in July 2017; and appreciation in exchange rate from N520/$ as at 20 February 2017 to N362/$ as at 17th August 2017.
He also identified some of the various impactful programmes of the administration to include the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, which presently feeds 3,065,000 pupils in 14 states and has employed 36,000 Cooks across the country; the Conditional Cash Transfer that has seen about over 30,000 households benefit from the N5,000 monthly stipend; the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme under which about 120,000 people have benefited from the cooperative loans; and the N-power that has employed 200,000 people.
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