Economy going out of recession, says FG

The recession is receding, the Federal Government said yesterday.
Proof: the about eight-fold over subscription of the government’s Eurobond (orders in excess of US$7.8 billion compared to a pre-issuance target of US$1bn).

Besides, the oversubscription, the government believes, has confirmed the confidence level of the international investment community in Nigeria’s economic reform agenda.
A report in Issue 23 of Aso Villa’s Newsletter, Government at Work, released on Monday, also gave 11 other reasons why the government believes that the economy is on its way out of recession.

After two consecutive quarters of negative growth, according to the newsletter, the non-oil economy witnessed in Q3 2016 a modest return to positive territory at 0.03%.
It attributed this marginal growth to the continued good performance of agriculture and solid minerals, two sectors prioritised by the Federal Government.
According to it, agriculture grew by 4.54% in the quarter; crop production is at nearly 5% – its highest since the first quarter of 2014.

Growth in the solid mineral sector, the newsletter said, averaged about 7%.
The second reason why the government believes the economy is recovering is the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which it said substantially raised local rice production in 2016 (yields improved from two tonnes per hectare to as much as seven tonnes per hectare, in some states) and produced a model agricultural collaboration between Lagos and Kebbi states.

Thirdly, it said that the Fertiliser Intervention Project (which involves a partnership with the Government of Morocco, for the supply of phosphate) is on course to significantly raise local production, and bring the retail price of fertiliser down by about 30 percent.

Another reason given by the government is the taking off of the newly established Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN), with initial funding of US$1.3bn (provided by the World Bank, German Development Bank, the African Development Bank and Agence Française de Development) to provide medium and long-term loans to MSMEs.