The minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that the Jonathan government has achieved great strides but can do more.
Okonjo-Iweala who spoke to CNN’s Richard Quest on why Nigerians should vote back the Jonathan government said that the government has created more jobs than any other government. She agreed with the fact that there’s still high rate of unemployment in the country but that, “this is the first government to actually lay it out and measure how much is needed to close the gap and then create more jobs for those who have been long unemployed off the unemployment road”.
She added that the government has done this in many ways, through its various programs and initiatives; YOUWIN which is an entrepreneurial initiative to help entrepreneurs create jobs for themselves and other citizens. Okonjo highlighted further that the government has built roads and revived the railways which had been moribund for 20 years.
On agriculture she said that the government has done a lot of work in this regard which is critical. According to her, “we have managed to reduce our food import considerably and we’ve done it by growing more rice and cassava. Food prices are low and inflation has been held at single digit for the first time in many years”.
The government though, she said, still needs to do more, “you can never do enough, as long as there is one unemployed person on the street who hasn’t got a job people are going to feel you’re not doing enough and as long as there are still some people whose lives are still below the poverty line and whose lives have not been changed, they’ll feel you’re not doing enough; we’ve not done enough we still need to do more.”
She however emphasised that the government has done a whole lot more and that the attempt to politicise issues to say the government has not achieved is uncalled for. ” Look, Nigeria economy has been growing at 7 per cent per annum, that is what you need in order to cut poverty which is one of the fastest growth rates in the world. This country has been growing from the non-oil sector which is very good because it shows that the economy is very diverse and when we rebased it we found that this largest economy in Africa now $510b in GDP, has services at 51 per cent, industry at 26 per cent, agriculture at 22 per cent and the creative industry is now 1.4 per cent of GDP.
On the budget and its calculation following the low price of oil, she said, “we have a bit of an issue because we have a constitutional requirement to submit our budget before the end of the fiscal year which is December and at that time oil had fallen to $70 and we used a benchmark price of $65pb but we immediately announced to the country that we expected oil price to fall further and we would make adjustments by doing scenarios at 60, 55, 50, 45 dollars and we would outline measure that will help us make up for the extra loss in revenue, that’s exactly what we’ve done”.
She added that they’re waiting for the price of oil to bottom out and for the National Assembly to come back in session to look at the budget since they’re still on the electioneering campaign and then the appropriate bench mark will be taken. “We’ve looked at cutting the cost of governance in order to make us more efficient and save money and also raising revenues. For Nigeria I want to say it’s going to be a difficult year but this is the biggest opportunity for us to become that non-oil economy that we want to be. We already have a diversified economic base but our revenue source is not diversified and that’s what we want to focus on and are focusing on right now.”
