The recent news by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that the country was out of recession should not excite Nigerians yet, says an economic expert, Prof. Ayodele Momodu.
Prof. Momodu who is a specialist in Econometrics and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Banking and Finance, Rivers State University said it’s too early to celebrate as the indices to slow that the country was out of recession were too minute.
He said, “If we were below zero level and now above zero, that means we are going out of recession, but we should wait for the third quarter statistics before we can say we are on the move”.
So far, he opined the macro-economic indicators such as unemployment is still high, “if you look at it consecutively unemployment, GDP or total output, including sectorial performances are still below performance”.
Prof. Momodu pointed out that a lot of people erroneously believe that recession affects all sectors, noting that it does not mean a total collapse of the economy, but that key sectors are usually affected in recession.
One way to stay out of the roads according to the university don is to create synergy between the federal and state governments in planning and budgeting.
“I will wait to see a situation where the need of the federal and state governments are harmonised”, Momodu remarked, so we don’t see federal government doing what the states are doing, so they can spread the resources better than we are doing now”.
He regretted that in a situation where both the federal and state government duplicated policies and programmes, funds are wasted are corruption was enhanced.