Aso Villa Reads for 24/06/2020
Every day, we bring you the best stories that the Media is reporting about the Government of Nigeria
As part of strategies to save Nigeria’s oil-dependent economy from slipping into recession post pandemic, the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC) has recommended some proactive measures, including mass housing and roads construction, where it says there is hope for economic recovery. ESC, headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is an inter-ministerial committee to be responsible for general oversight of implementation of its recommendations and will be reporting to the president. The inclusion of mass housing and roads construction among the proposed key projects is instructive. The committee believes, and rightly too, that these two key areas have the capacity to generate economic activities that will lead to creation of jobs needed now to revitalise the economy. Besides an extensive public works and road construction programme that will be focusing on both major and rural roads, the committee also sees hope in mass housing programme expected to deliver up to 300,000 homes annually. The programme is expected to engage young professionals and artisans who form themselves into small and medium scale businesses within the construction industry. Such enterprises will use indigenous labour and materials working on dedicated housing sites. Business Day reports.
Director General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Jelani Aliyu MFR said the agency has fallen in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s led administration on economic diversification policy as the government made it a priority to diversify from the crude oil into agricultural, industry, mining and tourism sectors. According to the NADDC director-general, ‘’When you talk about the industry, no other sector can play an important role as the automotive sector, that is why we are excited and proud to be one of the 17 parastatals under the federal ministry of industry, trade and investment, saddled with responsibility of developing local automotive sector by implementing the National Automotive Industrial Development Plan (NAIDP) which has five key elements’’. According to details made available to BusinessDay, he stated that the five key components includes; investment promotion, infrastructural development, improvement of standard, skills as well as market development. He further explained that with these key areas of NAIDP whose focus is to revive, develop and sustain local the automotive industry in terms of production of vehicles and its components in Nigeria.
In a bid to revive the Nigerian economy that has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and low oil price, the Federal Government is planning to launch a mass agricultural scheme under the Economic Sustainability Plan to create jobs, increase local productivity, and stimulate growth. The Economic Sustainability Plan aims to mitigate the effects of a deep recession while ensuring social stability and addressing long-standing economic vulnerabilities, the ESC document states. Agriculture in Africa’s most populous country has long been touted as a remedy to the country’s oil dependency owing to its attendant exponential gains by way of earnings, employment, and other spin-offs. With the current economic downturn, the country is grappling with, there is a consensus across board that there is no better time to leverage the potential of the sector than now, not just to avert the predicted recession, but to fully diversify the economy and place it on the path of sustainable growth post-COVID-19. Business Day reported.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), on Monday, announced the upgrade of its Data Portal (X-DataPortal) to revamp and improve market accessibility for subscribers. Mr. Oscar Onyema, Chief Executive Officer of the exchange, said in a statement in Lagos that the portal upgrade was to explore digital technologies to provide top-notch accessibility. Onyema said: “The upgrade of the X-DataPortal is in line with the desire of the NSE to continue providing an exchange that is easily accessible, leveraging digital technology. “The newly enhanced X-DataPortal has, therefore, been equipped with market-focused features that will complement the NSE website and other NSE portals in response to stakeholders’ increased demands for easy access to data. Given the importance of Market Data in investment decisions, we remain resolute in our commitment to provide capital market participants with more channels to access relevant market information required for making investment decisions.” Vanguard reported.
