A financial expert, Mr. Johnson Chukwu has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to focus on diversifying the economy further so as to grow other sectors of the economy that showed strong prospect.
Chukwu who made this known in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos noted that the entertainment industry had grown in the last eight years saying that the industry should be encouraged to grow further.
He observed that the manufacturing sector had also grown to about 9% from 3% it used to be in the past adding that the present administration should do more to grow the sector since that was where jobs would be created.
“Then we need to grow the value chain areas like the solid mineral so that we will begin to export products from that sub sector. Today, we are exporting cement, it is from the solid mineral. There are several other products that we used to export as raw materials and bring them in as finished goods. Take for instance oil and gas sector, it is part of the extractive industry, there is no reason why we should not trap the entire value chain in the oil production sector and export the final products so that we create employment here and earn foreign exchange from the export”.
“So, the new administration should focus a lot more effort at deepening the economy, at broadening the economy and growing the value chain of those products that we have comparative advantage on, such that we will begin to export the final products instead of exporting the raw materials”, he said.
He also opined that the Jonathan’s administration had done more than any government in the history of this country in the agricultural development advising the present administration to sustain the gains so far recorded in that sector.
He regretted that the former Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Akinwumi Adeshina was pushed to take up the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) job saying,” I am not excited, I am not a fan of those who sent him to ADB. I would rather prefer we have that man continue that job for the next four years so that he will institutionalize the policies he has brought to bear in that sector”.
Chukwu who is also the Managing Director, Cowry Asset Management Limited further pointed other areas to be given priority attention by the present administration to include the solid mineral development even as he said that Nigeria had moved from 2 million metric tonnes of cement production to about 28 million metric tonnes.
He maintained that the boost in the cement sector was encouraged and should be replicated in the lead, granite and several other solid mineral sectors in the country.
He further called the attention of the present administration to the automobile industry advising the government to drive it even as he also called for the sustenance of the sugar industrial policy.
According to him,” So, the industrial policy of the out gone government should be sustained. I think those areas and then the infrastructural policies, I mean we have the National Rail master plan, I mean the new government should start where the out gone government stopped to continue to build on that”.
