A financial analyst, Mr. Johnson Chukwu has given kudos to the administration of the former President Goodluck Jonathan saying that his government had tried to broaden the economy.
Chukwu while admitting that the performance of any government was contextual, noted that until recently when the oil price crashed, the government was able to maintain relatively strong and stable macro-economic environment.
He said,” Well, you know that the performance of any government is contextual in the sense that you have to look at the way it is operating. If you look at, I think until recently, when the oil price crashed, the government was able to maintain relatively strong and stable macro-economic environment. We saw for a long period of time until late last year, the exchange rate had remained stable, we saw interest rates trend southwards, we saw inflation also going down southwards until recently”.
“But like I said, it is contextual. The government had also tried to broaden the economy. When I talk about broadening the economy, I am talking of the structure of our GDP (Gross Domestic Products). We got to a point where oil accounts for about 16% of our GDP, we saw agriculture about 3% to 5% of the GDP, we saw the telecomm sector about 9% of the GDP, we have seen trade account about 9% of the GDP”.
“We have seen a more broad-based economy but that did not translate to broad-based foreign exchange earnings. The country remained a monolithic export commodity country and I think that should be the next level for the current government, to grow value chains in these other sectors that are growing so that they will become exportable and therefore broaden our export earnings”.
