Osinbajo: FG Ready to Boost Productivity to Grow Economy

•Wants Nigerian businesses to dominate African market

By Deji Elumoye

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has disclosed that the federal government was ready to boost productivity and generally grow the economy by enhancing agriculture, oil and gas and other sectors.

He also stressed the need for Nigerian businesses to dominate the African market through production of quality products for the continent to patronise.

Osinbajo, who spoke yesterday at a virtual interaction at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Country Strategy Dialogue on Nigeria, said there would also be specific attention to review trade policies that were rather too broad and expand the supply sides in revenues, foreign exchange, and electricity.

According to the vice president, boosting productivity was the cornerstone of the administration’s strategy.

He said, “The cornerstone of our strategy is boosting productivity by focusing on value addition as the guiding principle for all sectors, especially, agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals, digital services, tourism, hospitality, and entertainment.”

Osinbajo explained that, “just as we seek to increase production of rice, we are paying equal attention to other parts of the value chain such as storage, transportation, processing and marketing.

“Part of the whole idea of getting the orientation right is to align our policy orientation in order to achieve the objectives of the new strategic direction. One key thing in terms of getting the orientation right is jobs creation. The basic question with every programme and policy of government is how many jobs, direct and indirect, will this create.

“We are also looking at reciprocity for incentives; we have a very robust incentive regime but we think it’s time to really look at reciprocity. What jobs are created? Where is the value addition in return for these fiscal and other incentives?”

He then noted that loosening restrictions on trade was another issue of concern, because according to him, “it is important to loosen generalised restrictions on trade and focus instead on allowing imports of goods to which value can be added before domestic consumption or exportation.”

Explaining areas, where attention should be focused on the supply-side of the issues, the VP said, “stopping resort to demand management as the first policy option, and we think a post-COVID-19 policy reorientation requires moving away from a strategy of managing limited supplies to one of expanding the supply base, for example, in foreign exchange, government revenues, electricity, and petroleum products.”

On electricity, Osinbajo explained that rather than expending energy on managing the distribution of 5000MW that was being transmitted through the National Grid, “the focus must be on increasing the supply of electricity, including through allowing mini-grids, pushing solar power connections and allowing integrated power companies to emerge.”

He identified digital economy as an area that was “big for us and the next couple of years, and we are focusing on it. First, through getting additional funding, we have a $600million Innovation Fund with the African Development Bank, which we hope will really energise the industry.

“Nigeria has 6-7 Unicorns and all came between 2016 and now, in the middle of two recessions. It does show you how much energy and how much traction the whole technology space is gaining.”

On the new National Development Plan, Osinbajo noted that the new strategic direction would enable the country to achieve a GDP growth rate that was higher than the rate of growth of the population and enable more social inclusion.

“Three broad objectives of our post-COVID-19 development strategy: the first is to overcome the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the second is to achieve a GDP growth rate that is higher than the rate of growth of population and the third broad objective is to enable more social inclusion,” he said.

Osinbajo noted that in monetary policy terms, “a key issue is the availability and cost of accessing foreign exchange. It would also be important, in my view, to increase foreign exchange inflows into the economy.

“We think a focus on supply, as opposed to demand management, is the way that this should go. We think that we will be able to persuade the Central Bank of Nigeria, regarding our preferred approach to this,” he added.

Also yesterday, the Vice President emphasised the need to ensure that limitations to product quality and technical barriers to trade were removed, while improving the market acceptability of made-in-Nigeria products.

He stated this at the opening session of the virtual “Open-Day with MSMEs”, organised by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), saying, “This is particularly important as we seek to expand our exports to the rest of Africa in the African Continental Free Trade Area, and indeed to the rest of the world.”

Osinbajo explained that improving product quality “is integral to market entry and market share”, adding that, “our failure to adhere to international standards for product quality will continue to limit the market acceptability of our products and pose the risk of rejection and non-acceptance of ‘Made in Nigeria’ products at home and abroad.”

On initiatives designed to improve quality of export products, the VP expressed hope that the SON event would “further educate MSMEs on recent efforts to improve product standardisation, including the Nigeria National Standardization Strategy (NNSS) document, and the National Quality Policy document.”