Oscarline Onwuemenyi
03 June 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has insisted that available statistics shows that Nigeria is getting out of recession.
Mrs. Adeosun, who made the assertion while featuring on a Channels Television breakfast show, Sunrise Daily, in Abuja, said, “I think we are getting out of recession, all the statistics seems to suggest that but more importantly, we are getting on the part of the growth that will be sustainable so we can see a future for Nigeria.
“So, I think it is getting better,” the minister said.
The minister argued that the Muhammadu Buhari administration inherited several problems when it took office, many of which serve as impediments to attaining its goals of facilitating development across every sector of the nation. In spite of the challenges, the nation was getting on the path of sustainable growth, she said.
“We inherited a lot of problems,” the minister said, adding that “the Nigerian economy didn’t just need a little bit of fix here and there but needed radical surgery and to heal it will take a little bit longer.”
She explained further that prices of food commodities were high because of the cost of transporting the produce from the local to the urban areas, adding that the government was working to cushion then effect of these challenges.
Nigeria had been bedeviled with numerous economic challenges since President Muhammadu Buhari took over power in 2015.
In March 2016, after two-quarters of consecutive negative growth, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, confirmed that Nigeria was in a recession, the nation’s first since 1991.
Similarly, the NBS reported in its consumer price index for April that the country’s inflation rate slowed to 17.2 per cent although it remained at almost double the upper limit of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) 6 to 9 per cent target.
In January, the inflation rate had risen to about 18.72 per cent, before dropping for the first time to 17.78 per cent in February and 17.26 per cent in March, and 17.24 in April.
But Mrs. Adeosun, who assured that the economy would soon be in the right shape, urged Nigerians to be resilient and support the government in its developmental plans.