Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, has blamed the country’s present economic situation on the zero
political will of the immediate past government to save for the rainy day.
Speaking, yesterday, at the George
Washington University, Washington D.C. Okonjo-Iweala said the Goodluck Jonathan
administration differed seriously from the Olusegun Obasanjo administration
under whose administration the Nigeria government saved $22 billion, which she
said, helped to cushion the dryness that came the way of the country at the end
of the last decade. Okonjo-Iweala served as finance minister under President
Obasanjo between 2003 and 2006 and again under President Jonathan between 2011
and 2015.
The former finance minister and
World Bank president, who spoke on “inequality, growth and resilience,” with
Chile as an example of a country with a saving culture, was quoted by The
Cable, an online news medium, to have said: *Finance Minister,
Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala*Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala “We tried it in Nigeria, we put in an
oil price based fiscal rule in 2004 and it worked very well.
“We saved $22 billion because the
political will to do it was there. And when the 2008 /2009 crisis came, we were
able to draw on those savings precisely to issue about a five per cent of GDP
fiscal stimulus to the economy, and we never had to come to the Bank or the
Fund.
“This time around and this is the key now, you
need not only to have the instrument, but you also need the political will. In
my second time as a finance minister, from 2011 to 2015, we had the instrument,
we had the means, we had done it before, but zero political will. “So we were
not able to save when we should have. That is why you find that Nigeria is now
in the situation it is in.
Along with so many other countries.
“That is the question that I ask, what do we need to do to these countries to
save over a period of long accelerated growth. “We need to devise mechanisms
not just that are good technically but find a way to either embed them in the
constitution or find a way to separate them from the political manipulation so
that these countries can survive over time.
“To build resilience, African
countries need tools, mechanisms and it is doable and we need to interrogate
ourselves why we have not done it.”
She was quoted to have said that her
as saying that manufacturing was also critical to growth in Nigeria and the
rest of Africa as she was reported to have said that manufacturing represented
just 11 per cent of GDP in Africa. “I do not believe that we can be resilient,
except if we can encourage manufacturing even on the goods we consume,
services, entertainment industry, agriculture.
“I think these are the kinds of
questions that policy makers struggle with on a daily basis and that is what we
are going to answer to get resilience. “If we don’t get these mechanisms, we
politicise them, find ways to transform the base of the economy and create jobs
including in manufacturing, I believe we are going to go into this looming
deceleration that is being talked about.”
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