The Federal Government has said that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is working and that the results are showing in the various sectors of the economy.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, was quoted to have stated this at the 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigerians in Kano on Wednesday.
A statement signed by Mohammed’s media aide, Mr Segun Adeyemi, said the minister noted that pulling Nigeria out of recession was not by accident.
“Taking Nigeria out of recession did not happen by accident. It is the culmination of months of hard work by the administration and fidelity to its well-articulated economic policies, especially the Strategic Implementation Economic Recovery (2016) and the Growth Plan that was launched on 5th April, 2017,” he said.
Mohammed was also said to have listed some of the “incrementally-positive steps’’ that got Nigeria out of recession as including the reversal of the consistent slowdown since 2014 to a level where the GDP finally grew by 0.55 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.
He said, ‘’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 the 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 was also said to have listed other positive developments as 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 719.4bn, up from 671.3bn; increase in capital inflow that brought the total value of capital imported into Nigeria in the second quarter of 2017 to $1,792.3m, representing a growth of 95.02 per cent; increase in foreign reserves to a 30-month high of $31.8bn in July, 2017; and appreciation in exchange rate from N520/$ as of 20th February, 2017 to N362/$ as at 17th August, 2017.
He said the administration also made impacts through the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, which 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.
Meanwhile, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has said recession is not over until Nigerians can eat three square meals.
He said this while responding to a report by the NBS that the nation has exited recession.
In a series of tweets in Wednesday, Atiku said although the news was a good one, inflation was still high.
He wrote, “As a Nigerian, investor and employer of labour, the news of Nigeria’s official emergence from the recession is most welcome.
“The news is surely a boost for Nigeria — it tells investors, local and foreign, that our economy is worth investing in.
“While we rejoice, it’s also important to recognise that economic weakness at the bottom of the pyramid remains. Inflation is still high.
“We must continue working hard to expand economic opportunity for all Nigerians.
“When all Nigerians can eat three square meals, that’s when the real recession ends. We have work to do.”
