Despite the criticisms trailing the nation’s increasing debt profile, the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed has said that the current administration is borrowing sensibly to take care of the infrastructural deficit in the country.
Ahmed who addressed a press conference on the recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the growth of the economy, stated that if there’s no investment that will return revenue in the future, there will be regrets.
She was joined at the brieifing by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed; as well as some other top government officials from her ministry.
The Minister also said that the country’s economy would have grown above 5 percent in the second quarter of 2021 if not for the security challenges that led to a slow growth in the agricultural sector.
She said; “The 2021 second quarter growth reflects better economic performance compared to the same quarter last year. The same quarter last year, we had a negative growth of -6.10 percent. It is also better than the first quarter of 2021.
“The service sector recorded a strong performance, growing by 9.27 percent this reporting quarter, representing the fastest growth in this sector since 2010.
“The second quarter growth of 2021 would have been much stronger than the 5.01 percent but for agriculture that recorded a slightly lower growth.
“A number of bottlenecks within the system including insecurity which has negatively affected the sector negatively. Also, the industrial sector slowed down to -1.3 percent.”
Ahmed also said that the non-oil sector contributed majorly to the growth witnessed in the second quarter.
She said; “The non-oil sector recorded a growth of 7 percent which represents the fastest growth since the third quarter of 2014.”
