THE Federal Government has expressed concerns that the growth recorded in Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had not impacted on the lives of Nigerians.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who spoke at the 28th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja on Monday, November 14, said rising food inflation in the country has taken the shine off the seventh consecutive quarterly growth in the economy.
She said, “We constantly say we have witnessed seven consecutive quarters of growth, it is the truth. But the growth has not permeated to the citizens as they are still buying food in high prices from the market so we need to look at how we can reduce the high cost of food prices.
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“That means we need to look at how we can better handle inflation in Nigeria today.
“The highest push of inflation is the food components and the food inflation is driven largely by high cost of transportation, which is also driven by high cost of energy. So we must address that energy source by diversifying the type of energy that we use, not just generally, but for transportation and also be able to expand the transportation sector itself,” the minister said.
Speaking further, Ahmed stressed the need for Nigeria to diversify its economy so different sectors could contribute to the country’s economic growth.
According to her, none of the sectors are thriving as expected “except for Information and Technology (ICT) sector that continues to grow on a consistent way”.
“Agriculture sector has been reporting growth but it has been slow, that is what we believe. We need to be able to really grow agriculture on an exponential basis and it means we have to concentrate on not only production but also processing and exporting agricultural produce to be able to earn foreign exchange,” she added.