Numbers don’t lie when they tell stories.
That is perhaps why the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo reflected the true situation of the nation in a series of number crunching facts at the the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Osinbajo was invited to participate in a policy dialogue session at the Chambers on Thursday, August 11 and during his address he said, “I doubt whether there is any need to say that Nigeria in the past 15 months has gone through probably its most challenging period in recent history.”
As depressing as it might have been, he did reel out the figures on the current state of the nation.
The Vice President revealed, “GDP declined from 6.3% in 2014 to 2.15% in 2015 and -0.36% in Q1 2016.
“FDI, which stood at about USD395 million in Q1 2015 declined by 56% to USD175million by Q1 of 2016. FPI, which averaged USD621 million in Q1 of 2015, had declined to USD90.3 million by Q1 2016.”
Also, “With the decline in the value of Naira, value of equities have been eroded by over 43% closing at market capitalisation of USD48billion in May 2016 against USD84 billion in same period 2014.
Inflation is at 16.5%.”
On power, Osinbajo said, “output fell from a historic high of 5000MW in February to about 2500 in recent times on account of over 60% loss in gas production due to vandalization of pipelines.”
On a brighter note however, the Vice President revealed that N332billion had already been released for capital spending with another N100 billion set to be released in a few days.
The main sectors for which the funds have been released are power, works and housing, defense, transportation and agriculture.
The government will also keep capital spending in the budget at a minimum of 30% because “investment that grows an economy.”
And the economy desperately needs to grow.