The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified governance bottlenecks and business regulations as some of the issues negatively impacting the country’s economic growth.
According to the agency, but for those issues, the country’s economy stands to grow at five per cent beyond the current 3.19 per cent, and therefore recommended a 25 per cent removal of the identified bottlenecks
IMF Resident Representative, Dr Christian Ebeke, stated this at the 2024 International Business Conference and Expo organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry in Lagos with the theme: ‘Invest Nigeria’.
He noted that Nigeria’s economic reforms, including the financial and external sector liberalisation, need to be consolidated to “transform the country’s nascent momentum into something more general.”
Ebeke further stated that Nigeria was lagging behind as an emerging market due to structural gaps in governance and business regulation, pointing out that closing the gaps will trigger a multi-durable growth acceleration.
According to him, the IMF ran a simulation of reducing the structural gaps by 25 per cent and discovered that bringing governance and business regulation to the level of older energy markets can lift Nigeria’s output by 6.4 per cent in the next three years.
“If you divide this six by three, you have an additional ten percentage points. Right now, Nigeria is growing at three per cent so it means this country can grow at five per cent by simply reducing the governance bottlenecks and business regulations by 25 per cent only,” he stated.
Ebeke observed that Nigeria needs to grow at least five or eight per cent every year above the population growth.
President of LCCI, Gabriel Idahosa, said the 2-day 2024 International Business Conference and Expo would help the federal government embark on bold reforms in various sectors, including agriculture, energy, foreign exchange markets, and technology, to further diversify Nigeria’s economy and reduce our reliance on oil.
He urged the federal government to create a policy and regulatory environment to attract foreign investments into building factories in Nigeria to manufacture the many products we import today.
