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“Government is committed to the scheme. Our miners cannot achieve much as long as they rely on shovel and digger for their work. We also know that modern equipment are quite costly. So, government would make arrangements with financial institutions and some operators to make the equipment available for leasing.”

The minister gave some of the signs that the economy was on its way out of recession as marginal reduction in inflation rate which is the first in 15 months, relative stability in the foreign exchange market, steady increase in the foreign exchange reserves and renewed investor confidence which resulted into the oversubscription of the country’s $1bn Eurobond by eight times.

It noted that, “Previous issues of the NEITI quarterly review showed that disbursements in the first three quarters of 2016 were below the figures for the first three quarters of 2015. However, this trend was bucked in the fourth quarter of 2016, when disbursements climbed to N1.343tn, a nine per cent increase on the corresponding quarter of 2015.”

“What Dangote is doing is marvelous. We need to commend them. The way they led the backward integration policy to turn around our fortunes in the cement industry. I am delighted to see the development here bigger that what I saw the last time. And we are looking at how we can replicate the successes in the cement industry in other non-oil sectors of our economy.”