The Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivative Company and a renowned economist Bismarck Rewane analyses Nigeria economic growth during a Business morning programme at Channels Television on Monday.
He spoke extensively on the alarming state of the Nigeria economy and against the backdrop of a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which revealed that Nigeria’s economy contracted by 6.10 per cent in the second quarter of 2020.
In his words, Nigeria had preexisting conditions in Q1 that brought a slowdown and the contraction in the economy which was underestimated by analysts.
He added that the tools we have at our disposal to fight the recession is adequate and the stimuli required to take us out of a looming recession is much more than we anticipated.
“We are now faced with four unpleasant situations, the first variable is a recession which points to negative growth, and “The second variable is high inflation, which is at 13 per cent.
“The third variable is high unemployment which is at 28 per cent, and finally, is the weakness in the currency.
“So we are having external weaknesses and vulnerabilities, slow growth, high unemployment, and more than anything else, contraction in economic activity.
“Now we are going to move away from the monetary policy complement that we have to stimulate the economy with greater catalysts, which means we have to do some things differently from how we have known them to be”.
The government has to take some drastic measures which can not be treated as a normal occurrence.
