FG Predicts 4.2% GDP Growth by 2017

The Federal Government has forecasted a 4.2 per cent growth in the country’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, by 2017.

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, made this projection when she addressed Chief Financial Officers, CFOs, at the just concluded KPMG Professional Services CFO Forum and Survey Launch in Lagos.

Adeosun, in her presentation on the theme; Outlook of the Nigerian Economy, she noted that the country’s GDP for 2015 was the lowest in the last 15 years, at an average of 4 percent.

“Nigeria GDP, growth from 2005 to 2010 was at an average of 9 percent, and everybody was trying to announce about Nigeria saying, how fantastically we have been doing with great money in the economy.

“But we are actually mastering some vulnerability because if you look at the drop from 2010 to 2011, it was an average of 5 percent while oil price was still high.

“There was vulnerability building up in the economy, and this situation has been breeding for quite a while, and then we have the drop in crude price at 2015 and our GDP drop to an average of 4 percent.”

“My administration plan basically is to stimulate the economy to achieve a real GDP growth rate of 4.2 percent by 2017, then reduce the cost of governance, extract efficiencies in the public service and enhance collection of internally generated revenues.

“Also, we want to increase government expenditure on infrastructure, and then we are going to try and fund this budget deficit in the most efficient manner possible.

“There was vulnerability building up in the economy, and this situation has been breeding for quite a while, and then we have the drop in crude price at 2015 and our GDP drop to an average of 4 percent.”