The President of Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, (CIS) Olatunde Amolegbe has said that for Nigeria to achieve the potential inherent in our economy and improve the standard of living of the people, the country needs to push for an annual average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10 per cent or more over the next 10-to-20 year period.
Speaking at the Annual workshop of the CIS with the theme “Leveraging the Financial markets to achieve double digit economic growth for Nigeria”, he said that Nigerian economy annual GDP growth rate is at the low single digit levels.
He said that apart from Nigeria having massive infrastructural and educational deficit
to cover, it also contending with a significant employment deficit.
According to him “Nigeria is obviously
blessed with immense human and natural resources, unfortunately, we are also listed among the poorest countries in the world in term of per capita income. Just recently, in 2020, the country fell into its second economic recession in five years, although largely attributed to the covid-19 pandemic which affected all countries in the world and we exited the recession in the fourth quarter of the same year 2020″.
In his explanation, he said “the critical point we have to note is that, historically, it has been observed that poorer countries need a much faster rate of GDP growth than the advanced economies of the world in to maintain standards of living as well as keep up with higher population growth rate relative to the developed economies.
” In fact, if we review the economic history of Nigeria, we will observe that this phenomenon is not new. In 1970, we recorded a GDP growth of 25.01 per cent . The following year we recorded 14.24 per cent, while in 1974, it dropped further to 11.16 per cent. “
