REUTERS AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Abuja | Wednesday
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo has pledged his government’s support to improve business confidence in the oil-producing country at the urging of industry leaders.
“We have to improve confidence. I agree absolutely with that,” Obasanjo told the concluding session of this year’s Nigerian Economic Summit.
Nigeria’s industry leaders and public sector economic leaders comprising the Nigerian Economic Summit Group urged Obasanjo to help improve investment confidence and the cost of doing business in Nigeria.
After two days of brain-storming in various groups, the summit produced its conclusions, estimating that Nigeria would need annual private investment of $10bn to be able to create seven million jobs yearly.
The summit commended Obasanjo’s government for managing to hold the country’s exchange rate depreciation to about six percent this year from 8.5% in 1999, inflation at a single digit from double digits, and for more than doubling Nigeria’s foreign reserves to $8bn.
But it said Nigeria still faced major economic challenges, including a slow growth rate, projected to be no more than 3.0% this year after 2.7% in 1999. Capacity utilisation had also not fared better and would even dip further this year to 32% from 34% while unemployment had remained unchanged at 50% of the labour force, the report said.
The report also urged Obasanjo to move decisively to ensure law and order in the wake of a rising wave of ethnic and religious violence across the country. At least 100 people died in ethnic warfare in the commercial capital Lagos as the summit wound up.
The president, who ran a chicken farm in his home village before his election, said his own poultry business was certainly doing better.
“Although I am here in Abuja my farm has not closed,” he said, adding that egg production had gone up from 5% of installed capacity to 25%.
He also took issue with banking members of the summit group over high interest rates which he said were a significant constraint to economic growth.
“If you are a farmer, unless you are growing cocaine, how can you make it borrowing at 25 to 35%?” Obasanjo asked.