FG should focus on improving economy

A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Ola Vincent, has called on the Federal Government to place less emphasis on the Vision 2020 and instead focus on improving the economy.A statement made available to our correspondent quoted Vincent as saying at the annual dinner of the International Chamber of Commerce Nigeria that, Nigeria should aim to do better than it is doing now, and stop talking about becoming one of the largest economies in 2020.He noted that the way people talk about Nigeria achieving this feat assumed that the countries currently in the group of 20 largest economic had stopped growing, adding that this was further from the truth.Vincent said, These countries will not stop for Nigeria to catch up with them. They are also working to improve their economy and hence increase their growth. That is why achieving than what feat requires urgent steps to improve the economy. My advice is that we should focus on improving on where we are today, doing better than what we are currently doing.Citing the example of the need to increase power generation, he said, Nigeria is not going anywhere if the problem of power is not solved. Government has been talking about increasing generation to 4,000 or 5,000 megawatts but this should not be the goal. We should be talking about how to generate 40,000MW in three years. So, government must move quickly in the direction of producing enough power for the country.He said that a critical ingredient missing in current efforts to develop the economy was planning, noting that effort and resources should be devoted to comprehensive planning.The former CBN boss pointed out that the greatest impediment to development in the country was corruption.Those who practise corruption inhibit development. If corruption predominates, development would be lacking. What they do not realise is that if the money they steal is properly allocated to developing the economy there would be money to share, he said.He opposed the proposed removal of subsidy, saying that what the Federal Government should do was to reduce its running cost starting with reducing the number of special advisers to the President. He added that government should reduce the salaries of political appointees as it was being done in other climes.
Click here to read full news..