Citizens Not Feeling Impact Of GDP Growth – FG

The federal government has said the consistent growth in Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has not had a positive impact on the lives of its citizens as a result of growing inflation.

Speaking at the 28th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmad, said soaring food inflation in the country has outshined the seventh quarterly growth in the economy.

“We constantly say we have witnessed seven consecutive quarter a of growth, it is the truth, but the growth has not permeated to the citizens as they are still buying food in high prices from the market so we need to look at how we can reduce the high cost of food prices. That means we need to look at how we can better handle inflation because inflation in Nigeria today.”

“The highest push of inflation is the food components and the food inflation is driven largely by high cost of transportation, which is also driven by high cost of energy. So we must address that energy source by diversifying the type of energy that we use, not just generally, but for transportation and also be able to expand the transportation sector itself.”

She added that the country needs to diversify while different sectors are contributing their growth.

She however said none of the sectors are growing high enough as expected “except for information and technology sector that continues to grow on a consistent way.”

“Agriculture sector has been reporting growth but it has been slow, that is what we believe. We need to be able to really grow agriculture on an exponential basis and it means we have to concentrate on not only production but also processing and exporting agricultural produce to be able to earn foreign exchange.”