Productivity in the Nigerian economy is presently critically challenged as a result of many key development factors at play in the finance operational activities that manifest in the form of excess liquidity in the money market. It is a situation that requires very careful fiscal planning with aggressive management for the uninterruptible, steady growth of the real sector of the economy. This envisioned economic condition can only be actualised through massive investments in all sectors, particularly the energy sector (oil & gas), with optimal efficiency in the conversion of capital stock of every available resource through value addition and recreation of all raw materials to either semi finished goods or finished commodities. This is something that could go a long way to counter the imminent inflation that may arise from the excess liquidity in the money market. The housing sector, on the other hand, should be targeted to complement the efforts being made in the manufacturing sector to boost economic growth, as well as impact poverty reduction efforts in the society. These actions will knock off the sluggishness responsible for the low productivity in the economy. This is with the understanding that the labour force will be effectively and adequately equipped with proper training; especially given the fact that Nigeria is favoured with the demographic advantage of a predominantly youthful population.
The poor economic realities of the country directly correlate with the real performance indices of the activities of the entire local manufacturers. This can actually improve to experience a paradigm shift in productivity within the economy, if the earlier mentioned conservative efforts through fiscal reforms are made with the nation’s local content in local manufacturing. At this time in the nation’s life, a major policy error can be seen in the federal government’s spiraling high costs of governance, high debts through borrowing, and its nagging and endless external loans servicing arrangements (with high interest payments that are shortchanging capital projects) that are subjecting the economy to high inflation and underfunded public (social) services in both the educational and health sectors.
This is because improved productivity in the economy will create commensurate wealth that can critically contain, offset and reasonably erase these unfavourable, unbearable and unfriendly loads on the nation’s economy. Such crucial steps for productivity, once they are taken and carefully observed, future economic growth and improved standard of living will therefore be assured for the society. The employed workforce in the labour market that is paid good and adequate salaries therefore, can afford to have reasonable disposable incomes for healthy living.
In the energy sector, what the government needs to do is to promote massive local investments by attracting prospective investors (captains of industry) from the private sector, who are already operating in that sector of the economy. Such operators and high net worth business magnates will severally and respectively develop, advance and expand the energy value chain; in such a manner that energy consumers (both for domestic and industrial uses) are efficiently serviced, to reduce sluggish productivity, by avoiding a slowdown in their respective man-hour inputs into the economy. This is to further trigger efficient service deliveries at the bottom rung of every value chain in the economy. The members of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), for instance, need to be fully engaged by the government, and to make sure that the costs of cooking gas (LPG) and compressed natural gas (CNG), are competitively priced amongst the operators in the local gas market.
With the newly constructed road on land, from Port Harcourt to Bonny in Rivers State, where the NLNG plant is located, more gas business operators along the value chain, with enthused readiness to partake in the gas business operations, will be effectively engaged. More LPG shall, in due course, be significantly rooted more to the local market (instead of the bill for exports), where numerous Nigerians are expected to be in the business loop.
What the economy needs is how to improve and fend for the better living standards of the entire citizenry, with the available opportunity to exploit full and maximum utility of the divinely endowed natural resources (at affordable costs) for the general good of every Nigerian. Macroeconomic stability for growth in the economy can only be better actualized by the very administrators in government, through how they manage, and where they apply the economic policies; with the strategic reforms that are constantly needed to make things work progressively in the economy.
