By Ediri Ejoh & Hope Ofobike

Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okojo- Iweala has said that the country’s economy has to a greater extent experienced development in other sectors of the economy.

Okonjo-Iweala

Addressing members of the business community in Lagos, she said the administration of President Jonathan had foreseen the need to develop other sectors of the economy long before the falling oil price and had invested in some areas over the years.

She said: “We will talk about diversifying the economic. This is because the difficulties we are having on the economy and the oil and gas have been challenged with the nature of instability in the economy; therefore, diversification is the topic on everyone’s lips.

“The President had foreseen that, what we needed to do in other to improve the country’s economy is to tap into all the sectors of the economy that were different and separate from the oil and gas. We would continue to tap oil and gas, but we would look at other sectors and develop them. The Minister said that the government and Nigeria Bureau of Statistics found out that 1.8 million jobs are needed yearly to meet the needs of Nigerians, adding that currently the government is creating 1.2 million jobs yearly and needs the support of Nigerians to bridge the gap between the next three to four years.

“Transformation agenda of the President actually means diversifying agenda. It has proven to be a very sound set of policies. We found that the economy is more diversified than we thought and therefore the policies that support the different sectors are sound policies. “We found that the services sector is much larger, and agriculture still remains important at 22 percent, services at 51 percent, industries at 26 percent. The creative sectors that are up-coming are at 1.4 percent. This means that our country is moving forward and therefore, the push to support agriculture, and see it as a main stem of the country’s economy, to grow above and stop importation, was the right one.

“The move to encourage manufacturing, minerals to support the creative industries was the right one also, as well as the development of the housing sector.

Very soon we are going to see the housing sector play a major role that hasn’t been seen before.  This is because the President foresaw that for both   social and economic reasons we should support this sector because other developed countries used the housing sector to create wealth of jobs and to serve both the middle class and those at the lower end of the society.

“Also, this would help push both social and economic objectives. All of you who travel know that the housing sector is very critical and yet you haven’t tapped it. These are the areas where we talk about transformation agenda.

In housing, we have started a new Nigeria Mortgage Refinancing Corporation, with the objectives of putting in more liquidity in the economy so that more mortgages can be given. We have already advertised for people to apply for the first 10,000 mortgages and 66,000 application came in and are been processed. This means that our young people can have homes that they can own houses and this means job creation and this is what diversification means.”