Okechukwu Enelamah, minister of
trade and investment, says there is no cause for alarm in respect to the recent
global poverty report released by Brookings Institution.
In a recent report, Brookings
Institution said Nigeria has replaced India as the world’s poverty capital with
six people slipping into poverty every minute.
While responding to questions
from journalists on Wednesday at the end of the federal executive council
meeting, he said the Buhari-led administration’s urgent infrastructure
programmes and enabling environment for businesses will reduce the poverty
rate.
He said the indices used by
Brookings Institution in the poverty report was probably compiled when the
country was in a recession.
The economy had slipped into a
recession in 2016 and exited in September 2017.
“I think first, we need to
understand when we get these reports that there are reports that are lagging in
indicators which means, people are reporting on history,” Enelamah said.
“So, when you get reports from
Brooking Institution or all sorts of people, you need to look at the context.
Somebody may have written a report when we were in a recession.
“Remember that if you are in a
recession, what it means is that even though, your population is growing,
people don’t stop procreating, your growth fact, which means that in theory
depending on how they run those numbers, you will be going the other way. There
is absolutely no question that there an urgency to create employment in
Nigeria.
“What I can tell you, with
certainty based on one’s background in business and economics, is that if we
complete the things on infrastructure and you implement these reports we are
doing, that is what I mean by a leading indicator, poverty will go down.
“There is no magic to it. But you
have to do it first, you have put in the infrastructure, you have to implement
the economic programme which is what will create the opportunities, they don’t
drop from the sky.
“So, I think we should roll up
our sleeves as a people and do the work because, if we don’t do it, our people
continue to bear children obviously, they would get poorer. So, I don’t think
we should kill ourselves that poverty is something just happen.
“I think it comes out of the
urgent need we have as a country which is why we are focusing as a government
to make sure that we create the enabling environment, the infrastructure that
is required to create opportunities for our people and I believe that will
happen in the process of time.”
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com