By UDEME CLEMENT

The Statistician-General of the Federation Dr. Yemi Kale, says Nigeria can achieve its vision of becoming one of the twenty largest global economies by the year 2020 if the current global growth trend continues.

Speaking against the speculation in some quarters that realising Vision 20:2020 GDP ratio in about a decade is under probability because of the inability of the economy to attain the projected double digit growth over the next few years, Kale based his positive outlook on the fact that Nigeria’s economy continues to grow strongly, while many of the countries it needs to overtake to be among the top 20 are slower than predicted.

Analysing the figures of growth rate from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), he said, “Nigeria’s economy grew by 7.40 per cent in the third quarter of 2011 though it slowed from 7.72 percent in the second quarter and 7.86 percent recorded in the corresponding period in 2010. With this growth trend, Nigeria has been able to climb up faster despite not achieving the double digit growth previously

assumed to be necessary for attaining the Vision. In the third quarter, for example, only two countries (China which grew by 9.1 percent and Estonia which recorded a 7.9 percent growth) out of 13 countries that have so far released their Q3 2011 GDP results grew faster than Nigeria and in Q2 2011 only two countries grew faster than Nigeria .”

He added, “if the trend continues and other countries continue to grow negatively, we will likely achieve Vision 20:2020, but I cannot predict if the trend would continue. Without doing any major change in our economy, we have moved from 44th to 41st within a year.

“If by the third quarter we are here and looking at the 1st and 2nd quarter growth of other countries, we may even move from the 41st position to somewhere in the thirties except a major catastrophe occurs in the last quarter.

So if the trend continues, and I mean that if Nigeria continues to do the right thing, and improves on what it is doing, we stand a chance of achieving that target or close to it”.

The SG explained, “As at the time the Vision 20:2020 blueprint was being crafted, the effects of the global economic crisis had not yet hit the world and the estimates of double digit growth were based on their growth trajectories. Since then however, many of these countries have grown either negatively or slower than was predicted by the Vision blueprint. This means the double digit growth required to be among the top 20 economies in the world by 2020 may not be necessary”.

Kale added, “The international community particularly thinks this Vision is possible considering the economic potential for strong growth, which is well recognised.”