Oscarline Onwuemenyi
10 March 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Nigerian Government has projected that the country will get out of the economic recession before the end of the year.
The position of the government was stated by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
Udoma, who spoke with newsmen after the meeting, said he informed the FEC of the recently released country’s economic performance report by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.
Udoma said he also briefed the FEC on the release of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
He said the result of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report is better than what many people, including the International Monetary Fund, projected.
Udoma said: “We are not yet out of the woods but our plan is to get out of recession by the end of this year.”
The minister said that the administration was expecting the quick passage of the 2017 budget to fast-track economic recovery.
He explained that government is funding agriculture, solid minerals and infrastructure development to return growth, invest in the people and build competitiveness of the economy.
“We are determined to, at the end of the (economic) plan, to move from the negative growth that we experienced in 2016 to a growth rate of seven percent by 2020,” he said.