The 2.9 percent economic growth projection by the Federal Government for the year 2020 is feasible despite the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Basnk (WB) downward projections.
The World Bank had earlier projected 2.1 percent growth for Nigeria in 2020 while the IMF on Monday projected 2.5 percent growth for the Nigerian economy. But the Buhari Media) Organisation (BMO) disagrees.
In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO said efforts by the Federal Government to improve the predictability of economic policies have been largely successful over the past few years. This has shown that a lot has been happening on the economic front.
“While respecting the international institutions on their projections, we want to make it clear that they cannot have access to our primary sources of information and data, no agencies or organisations can stay outside our territory and make conjectures from secondary data and information.
“The Federal Government had taken a global look at all indicators with the economic environment and it is better able to project the 2.9 percent for the year 2020, taking into account several policy deployments that lifted us out of recession. From -1.3 percent GDP we were able to move to 0.8 percent and 1.9 percent, moving by 1.1 percent growth within a space of one year and also from 1.9 percent to 2.3. This shows we are strongly moving”.
According to the pro-Buhari group, Nigeria has shown progress and, considering the current policy deployments by the Federal Government, our GDP growth rate would increase and improve our GDP to population growth ratio.
“Nigeria has seen a progressive increase in GDP since we exited recession, our economy has shown a capacity for growth. Growth might appear slow now, but the economy has shown capacity for continuous growth; from 0.8% in 2017 to 1.9% in 2018 and an average of 2.0 to 2.3 in 2019. We are sure that in the year 2020, with all the policies being set out by Federal Government, our GDP growth will be at 2.9 to 3%.”, the statement added.
