Policies, infrastructure frustrating FG’s diversification drive—BH Report
Indications have emerged showing that Nigerian government may have placed the cart before the horse in driving its Economic Recovery & Growth Plan (ERGP).
This is stemming from discoveries that the needed infrastructure indices to recover and grow the economy are not yet on ground.
Already, government is yet to come to terms what it actually needs to fix the nation’s infrastructure and also the best model.
Previous efforts of the government to drive PPP in infrastructure development have been fraught with inconsistencies and lack of trust both on the side of the government and private sector investors as several deals tend to follow either party lines or clique line against the spirit of national interest.
This is part of the reason why upon all efforts so far made by this administration in driving Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through strategic funding, breakthroughs seem too far.
Also, all efforts so far made to push the economy away from oil to non-oil sector have remained elusive as still yet, receipts from oil and gas sector currently account for a huge chunk of the country’s total exports’ earnings, an investigation has revealed.
Further breakdown of the foreign trade statistics obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that out of the total export earnings of N3.1tn for the second quarter of this year, oil and gas accounted for N2.43tn, while the non-oil sector accounted for the balance of N670bn.
Additional analysis also indicated that in export earnings, petroleum oil and oil obtained from bituminous minerals generated the sum of N2.42tn, representing 78.18 per cent.
This was followed by natural and liquefied gas with N412.49bn or 13.3 per cent, other petroleum gases with 1.16 per cent, and other liquefied petroleum gases and gaseous hydrocarbons, N19.63bn.
The report showed that the country earned N17.81bn from naphthalene; N16.59bn from propane; N13.52bn from cashew nuts; N12.51bn from medium petroleum oil; N10.29bn from butanes and N10.14bn from urea.
Other export receipts include the sum of N9.62bn was received as export earnings from cigarettes; N9.41bn from electrical energy; N8.33bn from cocoa; N7.02bn from sesame seeds and N4.16bn from kerosene jet fuel.
Giving an insight in an interview in Abuja, he Acting Chairman, Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Shettima Abba-Gana, said the commission was putting in place strategies to enable the country to generate more revenue from alternative sources such as solid minerals, public-private partnerships, tourism and agriculture.
He said the decline in allocation from the federation account by over 30 per cent had made it imperative for the commission to assist states to increase their Internally Generated Revenue.
