Tag Archives: Diversification

We need oil to get out of oil, says Osinbajo.

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Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo says Nigeria needs oil to get out of oil.

 

Osinbajo made the remark on Monday at the presentation of three books written by Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu in Abuja.

 

The books are, Compendium of Oil and Gas Cases in Nigeria, Legal issues in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry and the Petroleum Industry Bill: Getting to the Yes.

 

Speaking at the presentation Osinbajo said Kachikwu is an expert in the oil industry with over 30 years experience.

 

The Vice President who spoke on the nation’s need to diversify the economy said, “we need oil to get out of oil”.

 

He said, “I think it might be important to say that the federal government has had to deal frontally with the critical issues bedeviling the sector: the deregulation of the downstream sector and its continuing challenges, vandalism of pipelines and export facilities and the critical drop in production, gas to power issues, the urgent imperatives of local refining, cash call problems and the plans to exit that regime and empowering indigenous operators.

 

“As we move to diversify our economy we are acutely aware that we need oil to get out of oil. Yet our window of opportunity to benefit maximally from the petroleum industry is narrowing.

 

“The development in shale oil which the author spends considerable time on, the increasing breakthroughs in renewable energy use, the incredible speed of the expansion of the use of electric vehicles, Japan now has more electric charging stations than gas stations- all point inexorably to the fact that the party might be over sooner than we expected,” he said.

Diversification Does Not Reverse Recession – PDP Tells Buhari

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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said President Muhammadu Buhari administration is doing significant harm to the economy and that he cannot rescue Nigeria from economic recession.

 

This was made known in a statement on Friday, signed by PDP media director, Deji Adeyanju. The statement said the government was not taking the right steps to save the economy. He described the statement of Kemi Adeosun, finance minister, that the government would bring Nigeria out of recession through fiscal discipline and diversification as ’empty rhetoric’.

 

“Yesterday, the minister of finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, stated that the Muhammadu Buhari administration will focus on two policies to remove Nigeria from recession (fiscal discipline and diversification),” Adeyanju said.

 

Firstly, we believe a recession is not reversed by diversification. A recession is reversed by implementing a stimulus package designed to cut taxes, reduce the cost of doing business and boost spending on infrastructure & other critical sectors of the economy.

Available data shows that the Buhari administration has spent a meagre 19 percent of the allocation for CAPEX in budget 2016. This sort of spending will not make any sort of impact on the economy.

 

Assuming, but not conceding that Mrs Adeosun is right, the challenge is the past 15 months show that despite the glib talk the Buhari administration is doing neither.

 

For instance, despite claims of weeding out ghost workers from the payroll and reducing the civil service wage bill, Nigeria’s wage bill increased from N1.65tr in 2014 to N1.83tr and N1.71tr in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

 

These figures represent a combined total increase of N240bn from the wage bill in 2014.

 

Two days ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released its economic report for Q2 2016 which showed that the FG incurred a N1.09tr deficit for the quarter. This deficit was 96 percent higher than the N555.49b allowed.

 

Adeyanju said that the figures showed ‘an abject lack’ of fiscal discipline in the management of the nation’s finances by the Buhari administration.

Lead Campaign For Diversification Of ECOWAS Economy, FG Tells OTUWA

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The Federal Government on Wednesday in Abuja urged the Organisation of Trade Union of West Africa (OTUWA) to lead the campaign for the diversification of the economy of the ECOWAS sub-region.

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, made the call when he declared open a three-day workshop of OTUWA.

Ngige said the diversification of the economy of the ECOWAS sub-region was imperative because of the adverse effects of the global economic downturn.

He said the mono-economic bases of West African countries were largely responsible for their current economic woes.

“ There is a big threat to the economy of the ECOWAS sub-region because of our largely mono-economic base.

“I am happy that your organisation has been able to live down its challenges.

“ The revived OTUWA must, therefore, help the governments and employers in the sub-region to look elsewhere.

“In Nigeria, we must look for other sources of revenue and the most easily identifiable one is agriculture and of course, mining.

“We are also diversifying in trade and services. And because of the availability of fertile land in West Africa, the same thing goes to sister countries.

“OTUWA, which is our regional component of the World Union of Trade Unions, must, hence, lead this campaign for the diversification of the West African economy, ” the minister said.

Ngige called on the union to help the governments in the region develop the requisite skills for the full maximization of the utility of their cash crops.

He said this would enhance local processing of the raw forms into finished products.

He urged the workshop to be the starting point of this line of thought by getting the people to move from the area of white collar jobs to blue collar jobs in agriculture and mining.

Ngige urged OTUWA to be “ the catalysts in entrenching decent work environment in line with the ILO Convention which all are signatory to.”

Earlier, the President of OTUWA, Mr Mademba Sock, listed challenges facing labour in the sub-region and said the organisation was revived to fight the cause of the workers.

Also, Mr Dennis Zulu, ILO Country Director in Nigeria, said ILO had asked member states to organise national dialogues to come up with suggestions that would be useful for its development initiatives .

Zulu said that the initiatives would focus on work and society, decent jobs, the orgnisation of work and production as well as governance of work.

He called on social partners in the respective countries to contribute to the ILO Future of Work Initiative.

 

 

(NAN)

Plateau To Reduce Dependence On Federal Allocation – Lalong

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Plateau governor, Mr Simon Lalong, says his state is already diversifying its economy in order to reduce dependence on allocation from Federation Account.

 

He made this known in Abuja on Friday at the All Progressives Congress Media Roundtable.

 

The governor said that development of the state was on course but said that it was gradual.

 

He appealed to Nigerians to be patient and give President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration at least a year for the change being yearned for to be felt.

 

“We know people are expecting change but they should also understand the economic situation; we need to be patient with the reform that is going on so that the expected change will come. Let us give ourselves at least one year and see what the president and states are doing. Some of us are already diversifying.

 

We are moving into agriculture and other ways of diversification.

For me, if you give me between six months and one year and with adequate funding, like getting our full bailout, let me go into Internally Generated Revenue.

By God’s grace, when you come, you will see a different Plateau,’’ he said.

 

On the president’s trips, Lalong said that they would be beneficial to the nation at the long run.

 

“I don’t see anything wrong with it. Presently, I am granting an interview in Abuja and not in Jos; if I didn’t travel to Abuja from Jos, who will fight for my bailout?

For example, foreigners have stopped coming to Jos due to insecurity. If you want private investors, you have to travel all the way to Abuja because that’s where the foreigners are.

“That is also exactly what Mr President is doing. He is trying to attract private investors into the country to do business. He has been invited to several workshops and seminars.’’

 

Concerning the allegation that lawyers were part of the reason why the corruption fight was slow, the governor who is a lawyer said “If there are allegations against a profession like that, it is good to be specific.

 

“Each profession has a way of disciplining its members. This means that there are members who are recalcitrant.

So, it is better to name those lawyers, arrest, investigate and prosecute them.

I also have been detained by the EFCC in 2005/2006 for more than 40 days before I was later prosecuted, discharged and acquitted by the Supreme Court.

“All of that was because I wanted to follow due process with regards to illegal impeachment.’’

 

On the need to assign more women into positions of authority, he said that they had important portfolios in his government because he believed in their capabilities.

 

“We have three female commissioners; the Commissioner for Finance is a woman and that of Agriculture whose ministry is the thrust of our diversification programmes.

“We also have seven permanent secretaries who are doing excellently well; so we are taking good care of women affairs in the state,’’ he said.

 

(NAN)

Osinbajo Asks NEPC To Drive ‘Zero-oil Plan’ For Diversification

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Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday mandated the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), to lead the drive for the Federal Government’s economic diversification programme through its Zero- Oil in Nigeria Plan.

 

 

Osinbajo gave the directive when the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of NEPC, Chief Olusegun Awolowo, paid him a visit and presented the “achieving Zero-oil in Nigeria’’ plan.

 

The vice president said the presentation was comprehensive and timely considering that President Muhammadu Buhari had presented the 2016 budget of N6.08 trillion to the National Assembly and harped on economic diversification to fund it.

 

 

He said that focusing on agriculture and petrochemicals might be a good way forward in the diversification and urged NEPC to develop step-by-step approach on how to achieve the plan.

 

 

Osinbajo restated Buhari’s determination to improve the revenue of the country through non-oil sector in order to depend less on oil revenue adding that the administration would encourage all organisations to key into the plan.

 

 

“I certainly look forward to working with you on this,’’ Osinbajo declared, adding that such plan was long overdue in the country.

 
Osinbajo said NEPC had a major challenge of ensuring the implementation of the plan but called for synergy among the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to achieve the objective.

 
Awolowo told State House Correspondents that “this is a plan that we think will really help Nigeria out of the doldrums we now face.

 
“We are facing a drop of revenue of over $30 billion; our revenue from oil has fallen from$70 billion to about $40 billion; That alone can kill a country if we are not careful.

This government has put in place that our number one priority is economic diversification’’, he said.

 

Awolowo said that NEPC is the apex agency for the promotion of non-oil products in Nigeria.

 
“So, we have come up with this zero oil plan which we are getting the stakeholders’ buy-in all over, and which our minister will formally come and present to Mr President.’’

 
According to him, the plan is to scale up production on many of the products, agricultural products and petrochemical products, that Nigeria has comparative advantage and take them out to the world and trade internationally.

 
“We are looking at sectors; the minimum sector we a looking at targeting is $20 billion; so if a product is trading below that, we are not interested in it.

 
That is our zero-oil plan and let’s target and take Nigerian products to the world, to the international markets, so that we can earn foreign exchange.

 
We are looking at scaling up our non-oil exports to almost $30 billion by 2025. So the zero oil plan is what we must sit down, what we must do, for example, on petrochemical products.

 
We are looking at scaling up production to almost some 10 million metric tons of petrochemical products.

 
We can do that. Why? We are a petrol economy. The by-products of this we are not trading it internationally.

 
And that is the only way we can get out of this present economic crisis.’’

 
Awolowo said NEPC was also targeting cocoa production and value addition.

 
“The powder and everything being traded is a $30 billion market. So we need to first scale up production of cocoa and then we now start processing and then exporting.

 

Because we are still exporting raw thing, the hubs, we are on 250,000 metric tons. That is nothing.

 
In all these, we are going to work with the Ministry of Agriculture that has already started the process.

 
We are now going to give them figures. We are now going to give them the market where they can sell these products too.

 
We are also going to work with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) to target investments.’’

 
The NEPC boss said that the country had been the largest recipients of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the last seven years.

 

“But FDI comes into Nigeria, it is coming into oil and it is coming into trade funds. We are now saying that FDI must come into manufacturing and industry; that is the only way that we get value addition; that is the only way we can create jobs; and this is key.

 

“The zero oil plan is the solution to Nigeria’s problems.’’

 

 

(NAN)