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Pension funds, micro-finance listed as possible funding and growth triggers
By Vicky Bricks
An economist, Professor Olu Ajaikaye has made the case for fresh, creative and out-of-the-box thinking if the nation is to succeed with the recently launched Economic Recovery and and Growth Plan, ERGP.
Drawing on the summations of the lecture and a goodwill message by the Ambassador of Rwanda to Nigeria, His Excellency, Stanislas Kamanzi, the economist Biodun Adedipe reasoned that some of the possible way of mobilising resources to fund the ERGP and jumpstart the economy once again was to look in the area of exploiting the pension fund and then growing the micro-finance sector.
‘If we are able to look at what Rwanda has done with micro-finance and then tinker with it for our circumstance, then perhaps we can begin to make a headway in the sector here in Nigeria,’ Adedipe stated.
Adedipe also pointed out that it also made sense that if we continued to look to the private sector as the engine of growth in the economy, it is most important then to properly attract and motivate the sector in this wise.
Contributing, the Chairman of the occasion and Chair of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG, Mr Bukar Kyari endorsed the call for creative thinking saying that even if it required the setting up and floating bonds using the format of Infrastructure Investment Trusts, and in the manner of the already existing Real Estate Investment Trusts, REITs, that are presently listed in the capital market, he would be up for it.
In her own submission,the journalist and former Commissioner for Information in Rivers State, Mrs Ibim Seminitari said it was most critical that policy makers go on to walk their own talk when it comes to the making and implementation of plans.
‘Talking about plans, we have had a lot of them. Not many remember that we once used to have the rolling plans. And even more recently we have had the Niger-Delta Masterplan which was done a few years ago. We brought in Germans, everyone and it was done. It was so beautiful. However it looks like when things are too beautiful, we do not bother any more to implement them,’ Semenitari, who was until recently, the Acting Managing Director of the NDDC stated.
She alsoharped on the need for a justice system that will promote and protect investments.
Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun
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