OBASANJO FINALLY SPEAKS ON RECESSION

This comes even as he supported the establishment of a commodity exchange to ensure stability in the prices of agricultural produce, The Punch reports.

Olusegun Obasanjo has called for an increase in volume of trade internally & externally as one of the ways Nigeria can get out of recession.
Obasanjo made the suggestion in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital on Monday, October 24, during the opening of the 8th National Council on Industry, Trade and Investment currently holding in the state.

According to Obasanjo, here are five ways the country can get out of recession.

1. The government should put in place an aggressive coastal shipping system to boost trans-African trade with other countries on the continent from the current 12% to about 22%.

2. We need to spend less on goods that the nation could do away with, earn more from the manufacturing sector and borrow to finance critical sectors of the economy.

3. There is need to embrace financial discipline with the necessary political will to implement the various policies and programmes of the government aimed at taking the country out of recession.

4. Constituency projects by members of the National Assembly must stop.

5. We must embrace increase in the volume of trade internally and externally and the establishment of a commodity exchange to ensure stability in the prices of agricultural produce.

Meanwhile, vice president Yemi Osinbajo said that the current recession would be short-lived.


Speaking also during the 8th National Council on Industry, Trade and Investment in Ogun state, Osinbajo said changes would come “once the federal government is able to resolve the issues concerning pipeline vandalism and focus on a sustainable diversification policy.”

Osinbajo said that the loss of about 60% of the gas for power generation and 60% of revenue were largely responsible for the economic challenges currently facing the country.

The vice president dismissed predictions that the recession would last till around the year 2020 and assured Nigerians that the federal government would not rest until the problem was resolved.

He lamented the menace of vandals, which he noted had caused the drop in gas supply to the power stations, adding that the federal government was already working on ways of ending the activities of vandals, which constituted an act of economic sabotage.

According to him, the federal government was already encouraging a privately-owned refinery to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day to ease the problem of petroleum products’ supply across

Osinbajo expressed optimism that despite the drop in electricity generation to less than 3,000 megawatts, Nigeria could still meet the 7,000MW target by 2017.

He explained that the federal government was currently working on eight to nine transmission stations across the country to achieve the 7,000MW generation capacity.

“The President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government is equally working on increasing gas supplies to enable the federal government increase power supply throughout the country towards improving the energy needs of the country,” the vice president stated.

Nigeria’s economy had slipped into recession in the second quarter of the 2016, with the Gross Domestic Product contracting by 2.06%.

The Naira is also on a decline against the dollar, due to rising demand for foreign exchange that is not so much in circulation


https://www.naij.com/1021243-5-ways-nigeria-can-get-recession-obasanjo.html