Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF’s) African
Department has explained why Nigeria can’t achieve higher productivity
in many sectors of the economy.
He said without energy, it would be difficult for the acclaimed Africa’s giant to make headways.
Mr. Abebe Aemro Selassie, while briefing newsmen over the weekend at
the IMF/ World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington DC, “given how big the
size of the Nigerian economy is and given the potential that it has
including an agriculture, it is a sector that should be doing much
better I think. On the macro side I think what is needed in Nigeria at
this moment we think are mobilizing more revenues.”
He stressed that Revenue mobilisation is key to helping the
government invest more in health and education and building
infrastructure that is going to be important for other sectors like
agriculture, manufacturing to take off.
“Without energy, it’s difficult to have higher productivity
activities to take place including in agriculture. Some processing is
going to be important. So, addressing the energy issue, all of this I
think requires a lot more public investment and so the revenue
mobilization angle being important,” he said.
On the foreign exchange market reforms, Selassie appreciated the
progress recorded in the last five months but said the gap in the market
was still wide.
“If you look simply at the gap between the foreign exchange market
rate, you know, the bank rate and the parallel market rate was very,
very wide earlier this year, a lot of businesses complaining about
shortage of you know, not having enough access to foreign exchange, I
think that has attenuated over the last four, five months, so that’s
what we are encouraged by.
“The objective as we used to have before, has to be in creating a
liquid and deep single foreign exchange market. So, you know, reforms
toward that, going forward would be helpful,” he added.