No More Trader Moni! FG Reveals New Way To Tackle Bad Economy

The Federal Government, yesterday said it would revive the manufacturing industries and increase its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 9 per cent to 30 per cent to help grow the economy.

Nigeria is a middle-income, mixed economy and emerging market, with expanding manufacturing, financial, service, communications, technology and entertainment sectors. It is ranked as the 27th-largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and the 22nd-largest in terms of purchasing power parity.

It is the largest economy in Africa; its re-emergent manufacturing sector became the largest on the continent in 2013, and it produces a large proportion of goods and services for the West African subcontinent. In addition, the debt-to-GDP ratio is 11 percent, which is 8 percent below the 2012 ratio.

Previously hindered by years of mismanagement, economic reforms of the past decade[when?] have put Nigeria back on track towards achieving its full economic potential.

Nigerian GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) has almost tripled from $170 billion in 2000 to $451 billion in 2012, although estimates of the size of the informal sector (which is not included in official figures) put the actual numbers closer to $630 billion.

Correspondingly, the GDP per capita doubled from $1400 per person in 2000 to an estimated $2,800 per person in 2012 (again, with the inclusion of the informal sector, it is estimated that GDP per capita hovers around $3,900 per person). (Population increased from 120 million in 2000 to 160 million in 2010).

These figures were to be revised upwards by as much as 80% when metrics were to be recalculated subsequent to the rebasing of its economy in April 2014.

Disclosing this at the closing ceremony of the of the 2019 edition of the Manufacturing Equipment Expo (NME) and Manufacturing Partnership for African Development (mPAD), tagged:

“Optimizing Value Chain to Maximize Growth and Competitiveness in the Manufacturing Sector,” the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Christopher

Ogbonnaya Onu said the interest of the Ministry of Science and Technology was to meet the national need of Nigeria. “The best way to meet the needs of the manufacturers is to find out

what are the problems confronting them, why is it that one industry that rose five years ago is no longer doing well, that is what we must do, and to revive all those industries that

people see as being dead, the Ministry of Science and Technology will go to industries and ask what their problems are and when we find out their problems,

we come back and make sure that we do our research and innovation work to see how we can solve these problems.”