AFDB’S advisor urges President to target seven per cent GDP growth

PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu will need to speed up the countr y’s economic growth, targeting a minimum of seven per cent yearly growth rate to pull the people out of poverty as quickly as possible.

Senior Special Adviser to the President of the African Development Bank ( AFDB) on Industrialisation, Prof. Oyebanji Oyelaran- Oyeyinka, gave this charge in a n interview. He said such growth momentum would help Nigeria double its gross domestic product ( GDP) in 10 years.

Oyelaran- oyeyinka maintained that security and political stability must be pursued at all costs to give the economy headroom. He said though there are shortterm macroeconomic issues to quickly deal with, what Nigeria urgently needs was a structural shift in the economy.

He charged the administration to focus on rural modernisation through programmes like the Special Agro- Industrial Processing Zones ( SAPZ).

“SAPZ are locate d in periurban areas rather than in the primate or capital cities. This is how to use a policy to force the structural transformation of the economy. This is a bottom- up refor m starting with transforming agriculture while still building the necessar y industrial value chains and manufacturing logistics,” he said.

He urged the government to also promote small and medium enterprises ( SMES) and support the countr y’s large companies to become regionally and globally competitive.

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