The 22nd edition of the Nigeria Economic Summit kicked off in Abuja on Monday with a focus on Made-In-Nigeria goods.
The theme for this year’s summit, ‘Made-In-Nigeria’, according to the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, NESG, was to highlight the importance of relying less on importation of commodities that could be produced locally and by so doing, growing the country’s economy.
Declaring the summit open, President Muhammadu Buhari said: “Made in Nigeria lies at the heart of so many efforts we are making to lead us through this trouble times and lay a firm foundation for the future.”
“We need to diversify the economy so that we will never again have to rely on one commodity to survive as a country; so that we can produce the food we eat, make our own textiles, produce most of the things we use and create the right environment for our young to be able to benefit and create jobs through technology.
Chairman of the NESG board committee, Adedoyin Salami, said the made-in Nigeria campaign must be driven by all states of the federation if the targeted objectives are to be met.
“If made-in-Nigeria must succeed, it should not be the challenge of the federal government alone. All the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital territory (FCT) must have a role to play,” Salami said.
He said that priority must be placed on locally-produced goods during public procurements in other to ensure that Nigeria’s economy become globally competitive.
He noted that at present, the nation’s economic indices were far from ideal.
“The country’s economic situation is worse than stagflation. What we have is an economy that is shrinking in size,” he said.
“So far, this year it has shrunk by about 1.5 per cent, with combination of stagnant growth and rising costs,” he noted.
Salami said the seeming setback should be utilized as an opportunity to restrategise and re-engineer the economy.
On the international scene, he pointed out that only diaspora transfers to Nigeria was in favour of the economy, with about $23 billion sent into the country every year.
However, other indices like global economic policy, global trade, and capital flows have worsened and are likely to remain unfavourable to Nigeria throughout the life time of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
He said that Nigeria realized more than $90 billion from oil revenue and $6.7 billion from non-oil export revenues in 2013, but expressed pessimism that the country would realise up to $40 billion this year, as a result of dwindling global oil prices.
“The dynamics of oil has changed, with the production of shale oil. The cost of producing shale oil imposes a cap on oil prices, with 72 countries in the world potentially capable of producing shale oil, with Nigeria’s key customers, United States and China already producing shale oil or looking for alternatives to our oil,” he said.
Salami said the more efforts should be channeled to the diversification of the economy by developing other promising sectors of the economy such as agriculture, ICT, Real estate, trade, among others.
He advised leaders at all levels to put in their best in this regard, saying that “your success is not going to be measured by what you have done. You will always be judged by what remains to be done.”
“We cannot continue to depend on imports. If we continue to export so much of our values through imports, we are leaving so little for ourselves,” he said.
Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo-Udoma, in his speech noted that the present administration would continue to encourage and support the private sector as the anchor of the country’s economic growth.