Business man wey bi Africa richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, yesterday don yarn dis tori say Naija economy, economy no dey work.
Dangote yarn dis on Wednesday at the Roundtable parley with the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, with the theme “Going for Growth 2.0.”
Make Una read wetin im yarn :
“My heart bled when I read that Nigerian Customs collected N1.35trn import duties last year. It means the economy isn’t working. If the economy is working, the Customs shouldn’t collect that much money, it is the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) that should.”
“We can diversify the economy through agriculture and manufacturing. Manufacturing creates a lot of jobs, creates middle class and transforms families. These are the areas we need to focus on. But how do you diversify into manufacturing and make it an inclusive growth? You need to do more of backward integration or import substitution.
“Our economy is great because we have a local market. The economy of Asia is focused on exports. But we have a domestic market with our about 200 million population apart from the ECOWAS market.
“Our import last year was almost $47bn. It is not sustainable. We cannot have 200 million people, growing at an average 2.7 percent and we are importing most of the things we consume”, the industrialist said. According to him, “we need to be more serious so we don’t keep talking about diversification. It has been very elusive. I don’t know why. It is possible but people are not focusing on” .
“Government lost so much money last year in the traffic logjams of Apapa. Our three companies lost N30bn in profit. Which also means government will collect less tax from us. So, we need to look at infrastructure, we need to look at power because without power there won’t be growth. That is what will propel MSMEs to grow and be everywhere and spur manufacturing” .
“It’s not impossible to diversify. We need low interest rate, we have achieved to some extent, we need long term funds and we need CBN support to access forex for the import of machineries”
“Nigeria by this year will be the highest exporter of cement in Africa.
We are building 10 rice factories which by this year we will produce one million tons of rice” .
