The minister of finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that the Federal Government is seeking 200 million dollars “soft credit” from the German Government for the establishment of a development bank.
Okonjo-Iweala said this yesterday when a delegation of the German Government visited her in Abuja.
She added that a Development Bank of Nigeria was needed to ensure long-term loans for development of the country.
The Supervising co-ordinator of the Economy said that Nigeria had excellent relations with Germany and would want it to support growth and development in strategic areas of its economy.
“One of the areas is industrial revolution plan, which we have just launched. We think that we need to manufacture more things in Nigeria because we have a large market.
“We think that Germany can be of great assistance to us in sharing knowledge with us on how it has been able to organise itself to have the right skills at the right industries.
“We want to know, if we are going into manufacturing, how we can do that. The second area is that we admire the way that you built your development bank, KFW,” she added.
The minister said that in manufacturing, Nigeria would give priority to electronics and cars, especially with the large market in the country.
On the state of the nation’s economy, Okonjo-Iweala said that the economy had maintained a stable macro-economic framework with debt to GDP ratio of one per cent “with the rebased GDP”.
The minister, however, stated that the nation was faced with three major challenges of jobs creation, inclusion and high inequality. Earlier, the leader of the German delegation, Mr Gerd Mueller, said that the aim of the visit was for the minister to educate them on current economic developments in Nigeria. Agency report
