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Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Mr. Bismarck Rewane, has emphasised the imperative of building strong institutions in the country, if Nigeria must achieve the desired economic growth.
Rewane gave this insight as the keynote speaker at the 2019 Time Management and Productivity/Nigeria’s Employee of the Year Award Summit (TAMS/NEYA Summit) held in Lagos recently. The TEMA/NEYA summit is organised yearly by SB Telecoms, a provider of time and attendance management system solutions to organisations. Rewane spoke on the theme, “Charting Nigeria’s Path to Growth”. He said there are three variables necessary for a sustainable economic growth: good leadership, sound policies and strong institutions, the most critical being strong institutions.
“There are three variables of economic growth. These are good leadership, sound policies and strong institutions. Any two combination of the three will still produce a level of growth. But where institutions are weak, whatever growth is achieved is not sustainable and will eventually come back to zero,” Rewane said.
According to him, it is regrettable that Nigeria continues to trumpet its abundant potential due to the richness in human and natural resources yet little is being done to harness this richness. He admonished that the country needs to urgently start to work on the famed potential to achieve economic growth. Rewane stated that labour productivity in the country is very poor and that if that must be corrected to achieve GDP growth that is commensurate with the country’s size and resources, then the economy must make hard choices. “GDP growth can be achieved if we fix our weak infrastructure. The power sector problem, for instance, continues to be a huge burden with the sector hampered by enormous debt overhang and the inability to attract fresh financing. But this can easily be corrected if the debts are converted to equities,” he said.
