Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the administration was on
the right path in improving Nigeria’s business environment and
diversifying the economy.
Osinbajo made the submission in an interview with the Financial
Timess, where he also said that the federal government’s investment in
infrastructure would improve local manufacturing capacity, according to a
script of the interview released by Mr. Laolu Akande, the Senior
Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity.
Osinbajo said that there had been a lot of damage to the environment
in terms of business and others, but effecting the correction would take
a while.
He said that the administration is barely three years old, but is focused on doing the right thing.
“The moment you have the right people and you put the right
structures in place, you can do a lot, and I think we have been blessed
with an incredibly good team.
“We wanted us to be much farther ahead in terms of manufacturing. But
a lot of these things are also infrastructure constraints that cannot
be developed overnight, which explains why we are investing heavily in
infrastructure.
“We focus a great deal on diversifying; agriculture, manufacturing;
we’ve focused on trying to diversify as much as possible, and we think
that that is the path to go. There is no other way of doing this.
“And if you look at the figures, there has been tremendous
improvement, even export of raw materials, agriculture produce, even
manufacturing has improved. I think that we are on the right path. I am
convinced that we are going to stay the course.”
Akande reproduced the interview conducted by Mr David Pilling, the
Africa Editor of Financial Times on Thursday, May 31 at Eko Hotels and
Suites.
Below is the transcript
Q: Views of critics that the Buhari administration didn’t make the most opportunity of the recession to diversify the economy.
Vice President: First, the nature of the crisis, of
course, even beyond low oil prices, we were also experiencing
considerably reduced oil production. At some point, we were producing
less than a million barrels of oil per day, that being the major source
of revenue at the time. But I think that what we did during that period
was also very important in bringing the strong outcome that we are
seeing today.
In terms of corruption, I think that we were able to deal with grand
corruption. By that, I mean the sort of corruption where you found huge
sums of money missing from the treasury and all of that. And because we
were able to control grand corruption, we were able to do more with far
less. So, for example, we invested N1.3 trillion in 2016 on capital for
the very first time in almost 10 years of the country’s economic
history.
So, if we were able to invest more when oil prices at some point,
were $50 or $60, than when oil prices were at $110, $114; especially on
infrastructure and capital; I’m sure anyone could say that there is
something wrong with that. I think we managed to do far more with less.
Q: What else had been done by the administration?
Vice President: If you look at the different
sectors, let’s take agriculture, for example, we have recorded very
significant growth in agriculture. We are looking to gain at least 3.6
per cent growth in agriculture. That is particularly important to us,
because in thinking of diversification of our economy, agriculture is,
of course, a fitting point, and we closed that gap. Take rice for
example, we were importing rice in the order of about $1.6 billion a
year, which is about $5 million every day. Today, we are down to
importing just about two per cent of the rice that we consume. So we
have at least, ramped up rice production, we are practically
self-sufficient.
Q: What role did government play in this regard?
Vice President: No, it is creating the right
environment. For example, the Anchors Borrowers Programme was an
important programme in getting people back to the farms, and also, which
is one very part of this whole process, we supported the big millers in
being able to increase a lot of the paddy rice that was being produced.
So there was a genuine effort to ensure that we are able to not just
ramp up the production of rice, but also milling, and we found that the
private sector responded to that, and we found the big millers, WACOT
and others. Dangote is now investing about a million metric tonnes of
milling capacity. I think that at this stage, agriculture has recorded
significant improvement.
Also mining, because of the focus on mining, growth continued through the recession and growth has continued even now…
Q: Nigeria’s manufacturing capabilities.
Vice President: We are trying to create the right
environment for manufacturing, and for business generally. And we took
time to focus on the business environment with our Ease of Doing
Business initiative, and we worked on various areas, including access to
credit, access to registration of title, company registration, taxation
and all of those things.
We looked at all of the different areas in our Ease of Doing
Business, with a view to making life easier, to creating the right
environment for manufacturing and for business generally. And we’ve
recorded significant growth and this we are seeing in the growth that we
are seeing today.
I’m sure you are familiar with how our World Bank rating went up and
we were also considered one of the best reforming countries in the
world.
Of course, there has been a lot of damage to the environment in terms of
business and all that, but correcting that would take a while, don’t
forget that we (this administration) are barely three years old. And we
are focused on doing the right thing.
Q: What areas hasn’t the administration been able to achieve all that it had planned to?
Vice President: I think the one thing we wanted was
for us to be much farther ahead in terms of manufacturing. But a lot of
these things are also infrastructure constraints that cannot be
developed overnight; which explains why we are investing heavily in
infrastructure; rail, road and power, especially rail. This is the
significant part of the investment that we are doing; concessioning the
Lagos-Kano to General Electric, the narrow gauge, developing the
standard gauge is important in terms of just movement of goods and all
that. A lot of these initiatives would be a great help in moving goods.
Q: Why hasn’t Nigeria signed the African Free Trade Agreement yet?
Vice President: Nigeria has one of the most vibrant
private sectors. Manufacturers associations, in particular, and several
others felt that we shouldn’t go into this without further
consultations, and we wanted to know exactly what specifically in terms
of negotiations that will follow the signing of the framework. And it
was the President’s opinion that it would be much wiser for us to
suspend the signing until all of those engagements had been done to the
satisfaction of the private sector. We work very closely with the
private sector in practically everything that we have done.
For us, it is important to sit back, take a look at those
negotiations first before heading into the framework, which is really
what we are doing at the moment. So, where we are is that we are looking
at the nitty gritty and we are trying to be sure how it is going to
play for our private sector people, for industry, for trade, etc. We are
not saying we are going to renegotiate the framework; the framework is
already there. Our greater concern is for the specifics. And we are at a
point where before we go into that, we will certainly make sure that we
are happy with the terms and conditions.
Q: How is the administration tackling Nigeria’s security challenges?
Vice President: First of all, let me say that the
nature of the security threats is asymmetric coping with it. And this is
the same with countries all over the world; coping with terrorism is
the sort of thing that most countries are grappling with.
I think that we are dealing with that as well. And my take is that
the way we are going about it is the right way, in other words, we are
working with partners in the sub-region to ensure that we are able to
stem the flow of small arms for example.
We are also working on developing our local capacity. One of the
strong initiatives that we are pushing is community policing; because a
lot of the terrorism that you see are the sorts of opportunistic attacks
that require local policing. And one of the strong initiatives that we
are pushing is the whole question of the state police; more local and
community policing, and we are working on those initiatives with the
governors, like in the National Economic Council, which I have the
privilege of chairing. We are trying to see how we can do more in terms
of local policing, intelligence gathering, in order to be able to
respond much more quickly to some of the threats that we see.
For example, in Benue State, we have deployed Special Forces now to
several of the places where we have the disturbances. So, it is an
ongoing engagement, and, as I said, asymmetric threat of this nature
means that we just have to keep planning ahead as much as we can.
Q: Criticisms of government’s efforts in tackling herdsmen/farmers clashes.
Vice President: If you look at the herdsmen/farmers
clashes, it is a different type of problem (to the issue of Boko Haram)
and it has to be dealt with differently. Note that this crisis did not
start with the Buhari government. These clashes have been going on for
years. I think we are at a point that we believe that the right
response; our response, has to be robust to ensuring that we are able to
keep communities safe, which is what is going on. We are doing that in
various parts of the North central.
Q: On Nigeria’s dependence on oil revenue.
Vice President: I think that what we are doing is
that we are managing our finances far better. Today oil prices are about
$80 a barrel. Our reserves are at $47 billion, which is the highest in
about 10 years, comparable to 2013 when oil prices were higher. So
beside the Sovereign Wealth Fund, we have invested far more; we’ve
almost tripled our investment in the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
I think the question about whether you spend or you don’t spend is
really more a question of how you manage the resources in the first
place. For us, I think that the management of resources has been a
strong point. I think we have managed our resources well. Which explains
why we focus a great deal on diversifying; agriculture, manufacturing.
We’ve focused on trying to diversify as much as possible, and we think
that it is the path to go. There is no other way of doing this.
And if you look at the figures, there has been tremendous
improvement, in the export of raw materials, agriculture produce, even
manufacturing has improved. I think that we are on the right path. I am
convinced that we are going to stay the course.
