By Mr Ufuoma Ubiebor

Optimism, pessimism, which is right to choose in the present Nigeria economy? If we must choose optimism with the current state of our economy, meaning we must recalibrate all sectors of our economy to be more productive so as to enable us shoot our balloon astronomically and position properly in the competitive global economy.

Currently, the Nigerian economy is suffering an immense decline in all sectors as a result of lack of productivity. A key task for the government today, is to develop a mindset that is interwoven with productivity if truly we want to embrace an accelerated economic growth.

The “Vernacular” productivity is broad and collective, in its real sense it is inextricably linked to economic growth; economy is dependent mostly on labour and capital productivity for optimal performance, because without productivity one will continue to be stuck and continue to face a lower living standard, more wealth gap, more inflationary pressure, continous debt crisis, rising unemployment and more social division among the geopolitical zones, etc.

Productivity in economics is truly much same as productivity on one’s work station. It does measure the amount of value created for each hour that is worked by a personnel in a society, meaning the amount of work one can get done in a day is one’s rate of productivity. But on a nation’s perspective, productivity can mean difference between good and not very good standard of living, the only way people in a nation can experience a good standard of living. It is only through productivity growth that a private organisation can afford to increase wages for its employees and continue operating its business; this shows us that stagnating productivity brings troubles to an economy like we are experiencing today.

The a million dollar question is, how do we increase productivity? Firstly, it is to properly have an insight on what exactly it is and how it works in its simplest form, it is the measure of output relatively to input which is the most common productivity measurement in an economy, it is GDP per hour worked or it is an economic output. On the scale of a nation, it is calculated as a ratio of GDP per total hours worked, for example, if our country’s GDP were #1 trillion naira and her citizens worked 20 billion hours to create that value, our country’s labour productivity would be #50 naira per hour thus tells us that labour productivity growth is predominant to increase wages and the standard of living which would assist increase consumer spending power in an economy. Capital productivity is another determinant of economic growth, it is how physical investment such as industries, real estate is used to generate output such as goods and services in an economy. China is a typical example in recent times that grew its GDP through labour and capital productivity. Thus illustrates that labour and capital productivity are determinant of the overall standard of living in a country.

The big question is, how do we unlock productivity in Nigeria? Point 1: Government must work with sincerity of purpose and lead by examples.

Workable reforms must be created and implemented in the three arms of government.

Point 3: Government must operate an efficient real-time performance management system across board, i.e., from the presidency, narrow down to the lowest cadre of employees in the civil service.

Point 4: Government must operate with global best practices on a daily basis.
Point 5: Government must create and implement 15% rule of time which is 1hr 6mins given to civil servants on a daily basis at work to brainstorm and come out with creative and innovative ideas that would drive their ministries, departments and agencies forward and generate new streams of income into their coffers.
Point 6: Government must provide conducive working environment and efficient working tools for all MDA’s.

The government must optimise capital leverage.
Government must upskill workers and change how their organisation operates periodically.
Government must invest in capital technology and innovations.

Government must implement 5% of its total budget every year on research and development (R&D) as this is crucial for robust and sustainable economic growth.

The banks must encourage private investors and business owners with single digit funding so that they can open up their businesses properly and create more jobs in the economy.

Government must open up all it’s owned moribund industries, steel plants, etc, so as to create more jobs and get more taxes.

The government must operate all the dysfunctional seaports across the country so as to open up economic activities and create more jobs and new income streams and taxes.

Government must fix and get all the refineries to work at full capacity on a daily basis, so as to boost the economy.

Government must create and operate a database that is far-reaching so as to collect more data to work with, especially data for wages and taxes.

Government must continously support MSME and SME ‘s with short and medium-term loans as they are the key drivers of the economy.

Government must fix the power sector speedily for ease of doing business, especially in the production sector and capture more users, then take off its non-existent band A and band B so as to encourage businesses and new startups for robust economic growth.

The government must reduce its running VAT and TAX model because of current consumer spending power and the fragilities in the economy so as to encourage businesses and reduce unnecessary pressures on citizens.

Mr Ufuoma Ubiebor is a Management Consultant.