“Nigeria out of recession in manufacturing, Agric, others”

The Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, has defended the performance of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration with regard to the economy, saying its impact has been positive.

He said this is more so considering the situation the administration met.
Mr Mohammed said this on Tuesday when he appeared on Channels Television’s breakfast show, Sunrise Daily.

“The important thing to say and the proper context is that this is from ground zero. We came in and we embarked on this new project and when we came in, clearly, the situation was not what we expected to meet. One, there was every low revenue; two, the country was prime for recession but despite this, we forged ahead and we were able to make this very positive impact in virtually every aspect of the economy,” he said.

The minister also said the government couldn’t have managed the economy better to prevent the loss of over three million jobs in 2016 as indicated by the National Bureau of Statistics.

“The real fact given by the same NBS was that despite this very austere time, we actually did move out of recession in manufacturing, we moved out of recession in agriculture, (and) we moved out of recession in solid minerals,” he said.

Mr Mohammed, who said NBS statistics showed that growth rate for the manufacturing sector was -7% in the first quarter of 2016 and +1.36% in the first quarter of 2017, attributed the growth to the commitment of the administration.

“That came about because of our commitment to invest in infrastructure, from our commitment with the ease of doing business and from the fact that we believe that, on like the previous administration were 16 percent (of the budget) was spent on infrastructure in 2015, we spent 30 percent of infrastructures in 2017 and that is why you can see that we are climbing out of recession,” he said.

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