It has been reported that Peter Obi, the Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 general elections, has faulted the latest National Bureau of Statistics report which stated that the country’s economy has recorded a five per cent growth to Gross Domestic Product growth.
Obi made this known on Sunday evening while featuring on Channels Television programme, ‘Politics Today’, adding that growth with rising poverty in the country was meaningless.
The former Governor of Anambra State said that, “The type of growth I want to see is the one that will pull Nigerians out of poverty by making the people to have disposable income and be able to feed themselves.”
He disclosed that, “We need the type of growth that will educate our children, provide primary health care for all the communities. We don’t need growth based on speculations that government officials are celebrating all over the places.”
He stated that, “The biggest engine for economic growth is the micro, small, medium enterprises. That is the practice all over the World.
He added that, “That engine today is not being supported in Nigeria. Nigeria has a total of 40 million SMEs but there is not properly articulated fiscal and monetary policy to support the critical sector.”
Obi stressed that, “The entire loan going to the private sectors in Nigeria today is about N30trn. Less than N1.5trn is going to the SMEs. This is less than five per cent of the entire loan. This means Nigeria is not supporting its engine that can enhance the nation’s economic growth.”
He continued that, “The SMEs are the biggest employer of labour in many advanced countries of the world. We need fiscal monetary policies that would invest in this engine of growth in order to create jobs.”
Add Comment