The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has refuted reports quoting its deputy governor, Kingsley Moghalu that the economy is weak.
“The attention of Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, Deputy Governor Financial System Stability, Central Bank of Nigeria, has been drawn to a news report in the Nation and Tribune Newspapers, published on Monday 7th October, 2013, quoting him as saying that the Nigerian economy was weak”, said Ugo Okorafor, director, Corporate Affairs of the apex bank in a statement.
“We wish to clarify that the report is totally inaccurate and misleading.
While delivering a lecture titled, “The Human Capital Dimension of Economic Transformation”, at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to mark the Golden Jubilee celebration of the first graduates of the university, he gave a contextual background on the Nigerian economy and the quest of Nigeria to become one of the top twenty economies in the world by the year 2020. In that context, he noted that Nigeria’s economy had historically not performed up to its full potential relative to the country’s endowments and the economic achievements of emerging market economies suchas those of China, Brazil, Malaysia, and South Korea, some of which were at similar levels of development with Nigeria in the 1960s”, he said.
He said, it is therefore misleading to create headlines suggesting that Nigeria’s economy is presently “weak” when, as a matter of fact, Nigeria has achieved GDP growth rates averaging 7 per cent, over the past five years. He is of the view that Nigeria has a robust macroeconomic environment, including a stable banking system, foreign exchange stability, and single digit inflation. In his lecture, the Deputy Governor explained and emphasized the link between human capital development, the education sector, and economic transformation, recommending several policy actions to increase investments in the quality of Nigeria’s stock of human capital in order to achieve the goals of the country’s economic transformation.