The presidency has said third Quarter GDP figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), reveal a consistent growth in agric and solid mineral sectors, indicating the success of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s economic policies even though overall economy is still in recession.
According to a statement by the spokesman of the Vice President, Laolu Akande, the over-riding impact of the oil and gas sector, where vandalism and sabotage of critical installations negatively affected production output, explains the persistence of the recession, as the non-oil economy posted a very slight growth.
He said the assertions were made by the Special Adviser to the President on Economic Matters, Dr. Adeyemi Dipeolu on behalf of the Economic Management Team on their reaction to the latest NBS reports.
According to him, efforts to resolve the Niger Delta situation are however continuing as the Federal Government has opened several channels of communication with all relevant groups in the Niger Delta.
He added that also, urgent fiscal and monetary measures to spur the economy back to overall positive territory are certainly in the offing including those targeting manufacturing.
Dipeolu said:“The third quarter results just released by the National Bureau of Statistics show that the Nigerian economy is still in recession. Growth in Gross Domestic Product fell by -2.24% in the third quarter as compared to the decline of -2.07% experienced in the second quarter.
“The slight deterioration in national economic performance owes largely to the continued poor performance of the oil and gas sector which worsened to -22.01% in the third quarter as compared to -17.48% in the second quarter of 2016.
” The immediate cause of this, as is now generally recognised, is the steep decline in oil and gas production in the third quarter of 2016 due to acts of vandalism and sabotage of oil export facilities.”
He asserted that remote causes include the continued outsized influence of the oil and gas sector on the rest of the economy as typified by its contribution to government revenue and foreign exchange earnings, which continue to be important motors of economic activity.
He, however, said pointed out that due to time lags, it is still too early for policy interventions of the Federal Government to begin to impact fully on economic activity saying” there are however some ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery beginning to emerge.
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