WorldStage Newsonline– The Federal Government has said that it is targeting services export for Nigerians to be able to execute online contracts for foreign firms.
Mr Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy said at the 2024 Access Bank Corporate Customers Forum with the theme: “Nigeria’s Economic rebirth: Hopes and Implications” that Nigerians would be able to do that by leveraging on the nation’s population and opportunities provided by the ICT sector.
He said that the federal government’s reforms were already yeilding fruits while explaining plans to increase oil production output for increased revenue and also improve non oil exports.
“An important area that we must look at when we are looking at non-dominant exports is services. We have the demographics, we have the relatively skilled population, which means that we can export our services,” Edun said. .
He said that a country like the Philippines was skilled and had the markets.
“They have the demand, and they have the procedures. So, rather than Nigeria going out to try and export and find markets, we can just piggyback on them.
“They can sub-contract to Nigeria some of the online services, and some of these centers for providing services online.
‘We can learn from them, benefit from them, and in fact subcontract to them,” he said.
He also explained the stabilisation plan of the federal government which included intervention in agriculture, social safety nets, manufacturing, and scaling up of SMEs.
He said that 360,000 farmers would be funded, assisted, mobilised and resourced to farm 360,000 hectares of farm land.
He said that government was expecting 1.4 million metric tons of maize, wheat, cassava, and tubers by January 2025 when the harvest comes,
“We can, and we must produce the food that we eat. We must do more than that, we must produce for export, and we must produce it for agro-industrial activities,” he said.
He congratulate Access Bank for organising the second forum and thanked the bank for supporting government’s dollar securities for Nigerians both home and abroad.
He explained efforts to achieve President Bola Tinubu’s vision to reset the economy to achieve development, growth, and reduction of poverty.
Roosevelt Ogbonna, Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, said that in 2023, the forum educated customers on adjusting to the fiscal policy mindset of the new government.
“So last year was to provide that context setting and allow businesses to start thinking about how to change their own policies following government’s directive.
He added that in 2024, conversations also sought to achieve mindset shift of customers towards harnessing opportunitoes to surmount economic challenges for growth and development.
“How do we stop talking about all the negatives and now start focusing on taking advantage of the economic opportunities that exist? So that is what this year was,” he said.
He said that the bank was part of the economy and had a duty to build it to stop mass migration, for Nigerians to stay back to join in building a vibrant economy.
However, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chairman and CEO, Dangote Group advised the Federal Government to encourage local manufacturing and empower local firms to be able to compete favourable against foreign conglomerates.
Dangote said that small businesses must be supported to grow to prevent Nigeria from being a dumping ground for finished cheaper foreign goods.
Mr Bismarck Rewane, Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivatives, gave economic outlook for 2025/2026 while reeling out statistics for various sectors.
He commended the federal government on planned commitment to bring down corporate income taxes by ensuring the very rich pay more on luxury items towards injection of more funds into the economy.
He predicted that Nigeria was going to be the third largest economy in 2026.
