By Abdulrahman Abdulraheem
The Federal Government has assured Nigerians that it is neither confused nor incapable of bringing Nigeria out of the present economic recession.
Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, who briefed State House correspondents after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting admitted that though the economy was in trouble, government officials had the competence to deal with it.
“It’s the worst possible time for us. Are we confused? Absolutely not. How are we going to get ourselves out of this recession? One, we must make sure that we diversify our economy.
“There are many people who want us to keep on relying on oil. We can see what happened at the output data of the oil and gas sector. What’s happening in the Niger Delta has dragged down the GDP of the entire economy. We’re too dependent on oil whereas 87 percent of our GDP should be non-oil. So let us drive those other areas.
We have to invest in capital projects. No, we are not confused; the times are confusing but we are not confused.
We are extremely focused. We know that if we can just bear and get through this difficult period, Nigeria is going to be better for it.
“If we rely on oil and the price of oil remains low and the quantity of oil remains low, we can’t grow. We have to grow our non-oil economy. “I think we have a long way to go. We’re not confused and we’re not deceiving ourselves that everything is rosy.
It’s not. It’s a difficult time for Nigeria but I think Nigeria is in the right hands and if we can stick with our strategy.
We still have some adjustments to make. I think we need to make some adjustments in monetary policy. It’s quite clear we do and we will do that. We’re working on that. We need to try and find a way to support the manufacturing sector better and we will do that,” she said.
