Mr Tunde Lawal, a director in the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning, said that over-dependence on crude oil earnings by past administrations had affected the country’s efforts to diversify its economy.
Lawal, a Macroeconomic analyst, said this in a paper presentation at the ongoing 15th Meeting of the Joint Planning Board and National Council on Development Planning in Kano on Wednesday.
“The unsuccessful effort of the country to diversity its economy, especially in the area of revenue, export and GDP structure is due to its dependence on revenues generated from crude oil,” he said.
This had left the country to what he described as ‘vulnerable to oil price and production shocks’.
Lawal said that the structural defect in the nation’s economy had also led to long standing challenges of price instability, unstable GDP growth and rising unemployment.
He identified other challenges to include: income inequality and poverty that had caused widespread civil unrests and youths’ restiveness in the country.
“The biggest challenges now are how to make the non-oil sector export-oriented and revenue generating.
“Another challenge is increasing the investment rate and contributing to the manufacturing sector,” Lawal said.
He said the lessons learnt from the implementation of previous national development plans and MDGs had not been impressive.
He said that lack of policy continuity and inconsistency in policy implementation had led to a proliferation of abandoned projects, as these had become the order of the day.
According to him, the high cost of governance, corruption, poor implementation of capital budget and inadequate alignment of the national and state developmental plans and budget are also among other unimpressive lessons.
NAN reports that the title of the paper is: “The Successor National Strategic Plan: What link with Economic Diversification and the SDGs?’’(NAN)
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