The Nigerian telecommunications sector posted N3 trillion in the first half of 2016,the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Professor Umar Dambatta, on Wednesday, September 7, said.
He disclosed this during a special visit to NCC by Foreign Defence Attaches, led by the Deputy Director, Foreign Liaison, Defence Intelligence Agency, Commodore Aminu Abdu, in Abuja.
Dambatta said the sector had remained resilient against all odds in the past six months, despite the hard biting economic recession ravaging the nation’s economy.
The NCC EVC, who was quoted by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, stated that the sector posted N1.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2016 and N1.6 trillion in the second quarter.
He said: The telecommunication sector posted positive growth in the first quarter of 2016. Remarkably, it still posted N1.6 trillion in the second quarter of 2016, one per cent increase of what it was in the first quarter.
“The telecom sector has remained resilient in the past six months, posting one per cent increase in second quarter of this year from what it posted in the previous quarter, despite the recession going on in the country. Government is on top of it.”
“This growth is an attestation to the resilience of the sector. The recession is a global phenomenon. Virtually all countries are in recession, except US and a few other countries.”
He noted that foreign direct investment, FDI, from the sector had increased since the liberalization of the sector from mere $50 million in 2001 to over $60 billion in 2015.
