The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Economic diversification

  • ‘Economic diversification should be cornerstone of national growth plan’

    ‘Economic diversification should be cornerstone of national growth plan’

    Chief Marketing Officer, Flobal Trust Limited and former Regional Head, Public Sector, Southsouth and Southeast, Ecobank Nigeria Plc, Mr. Abayomi Adeyeri, in this interview with Taofik Salako, speaks  on how Nigeria can create an enduring economic growth.

    What should be done to deepen the Nigerian capital market and en-hance domestic participation?

    The Nigeria capital market is largely driven by the activities of foreign investors. T!herefore, anytime they sneeze, the market catches cold as they have always been accountable for about 60 per cent of the volume in the market. Therefore as soon as there was sign of naira devaluation in the last quarter of last year, the market went flat as a result of their exit to protect their investment and convert back to dollars. I think one major way to deepen the capital market is by making the capital market investment environment more conducive. The promotion of online trading by the NSE is a welcome idea. This will enable the retail end of the market to be more active and larger proportion of the investing public will now be interested. It is also expected that SEC in collaboration with NSE should create awareness to the general public and also assure them of safety of investment. The reduction in settlement time for the present T plus 3 to following day settlement will also encourage the investing public.

    What  business policies should the Buhari administration adopt to grow the economy?

    I think, they are taking the right step in the right direction by trying to ensure a solid foundation is laid. I call this the planning stage. I expect this stage to be over very quickly to enable them to begin to run because Nigerians are becoming impatient. Focusing on reduction of corruption is laudable. It may not be easy to completely eradicate this immediately but the journey of a thousand miles must start with a step. Therefore, they should first block all the leakages of government income being diverted for personal interest while identified past leakages sitting in both local and foreign accounts are recovered and channeled towards infrastructural development.

    The government should also look at creating employment for our youths. The major cause of crime in the county today is idleness. If our youths are engaged, they are able to channel energy to nation building rather nation destroying. Today, the poor cannot sleep because they are hungry and most times inside darkness because of power failure. However, it will interest you to know that the rich cannot also sleep because the poor are awake. Therefore, for the rich to live comfortably, the poor must be settled and adequately compensated and I think the administration of Buhari is strongly looking at this.

    I also know that the administration must immediately diversify our economy. We have always relied on oil but oil has failed us. I expect to begin to see policies that will encourage agriculture. Where is the glory of cocoa today? We must begin to look and see how we can begin to generate more foreign exchange and begin to build our foreign reserves with positive balance of payment assessing alternative export products window outside the regular oil.

    Personal finance is an important but often neglected area. What can be done to foster personal finance education and practice among the people?

    I think education is very important, people need to understand the concepts, processes and implementation cycles of personal finance and planning. When we talk about personal finance, it is not about a rich man or woman alone, the focus is not on money alone but the entire life of a person and in as much as we are all living, personal finance is like the blood stream needed to sustain good and stress-free life. And it also goes beyond the planner’s life cycle to even his heirs and memories.

    According to Wes Moss, the author of a book “You can retire sooner than you think” What determines that you are rich is simply a relationship of what you have and what you need. As long as what you have covers what you need by 100%, you will be able to achieve a rich ratio of 1. Therefore, we educate our clients to always try and augment their needs as much as possible to at least maintain a minimum rich ratio of 1. Salary earners must always live below their means and ensure they are rooted in aggressive savings. Consequently, they are advised to spend wisely, save regularly and invest prudently.

    On our part, we are educating people on financial literacy and personal finance. We have been able to engage staff members of various NNPC and subsidiaries including Chevron on how to be financially intelligent and augment what they have to accommodate what they need.

    It is amazing seeing the plight of retirees and others becoming destitute after their working life. What is the way out of this ugly experience?

    From our various workshops and seminars, we have realised that the major challenge we face is lack of planning. Agreed, minimum income in Nigeria may not be ideal but it is a given fact that if you cannot save while earning N18,000 monthly, you may not also be able to save even when your monthly income becomes N180,000. We generally want to follow spending pattern of others resulting from bandwagon effect. We must be disciplined financially. You need to first ascertain your financial location, then determine your financial destination, then choose a vehicle that can easily deliver you to your financial destination. Vehicle can range from investment in money market to capital market and real estate. However, the services of a financial expert may be required for a good foundation and roadmap for a lifetime financial freedom. In Flobal Trust, we are delighted to assist our clients to expand their worth with the experience of our investment experts. We were able to equip participants in the last Warri Business Seminar with the tools required for an interesting and rewarding financial future. I will advise everyone especially those within Delta State to watch out for the next edition of this seminar powered by Flobal Trust, Klass and Korporate Consultants and Breakthrough moment.

    We also need to see more of public-private partnerships in solving the retirement problems. We want to encourage governments to partner with companies such as ours to create programmes and trainings that will help to change the civil servants’ mindset regarding financial planning and planning for retirement. We already have proposals with some state governments and we hope for a positive outcome in order to achieve the objective of your last question.

    We have designed one programme already titled “Planning for a Secure Future” and this has been delivered to 100 civil servants in Rivers State. It was an eye opener for those that attended based on their comment after the programme. As an advocate of rewarding retirement life, I took a bold step of early retirement after 20 years of bank work to retire and begin to work for myself. It may be rough today but I can assure you with about eight years of planning before early retirement to be an entrepreneur, it can only be better than what it were before now.

    Now, looking at your company, Flobal Trust, how do you see your activities impacting on the society in the medium to long-term?

    Our vision is to build a world class investment institution with sustainable growth and to expand the worth of our customers by providing innovative investment advice always. Consequently, we go the extra mile to build capacity to ensure that our customers are better informed with happenings in the financial sector and also become masters of their own business world by becoming financially intelligent.

    Our mission is to provide an effective platform and enabling environment that will facilitate and ensure convenient and accessible services to our customers. We are launching a site soon that will enable customers conveniently trade on the Nigerian Stock Exchange floor from the comfort of their homes and offices without necessarily interfacing with us.  As a result, they can leverage on timely information for on the spot order execution and consequently expand their asset worth.

    From our vision, it is clear that we are determined to add value to our customers by expanding their worth with innovative decisions as much as possible. I spent the last two decades working and adding value to my customers from the various banks I was privileged to work. Therefore coming to the capital market as one of the SEC-approved capital market operators in Nigeria, the vision of adding value to our customers are gradually being met with the various capacity building workshops and investment advice to potential retirees to ensure they have a fulfilled retirement life.

    Our primary target markets are the various private and public sector employees as well as the numerous self-employed individuals in our society while we also have the various public sector parastatals and private companies as our secondary target market for asset management advice and capacity building.

    We can proudly say that we are already achieving some of the goals of our mission and vision by adding value to the lives of Nigerians. We are in collaboration with two major companies namely Klass and Korporate Consultants and Cordros Capital Limited. While Klass and Korporate is an international consultant with an office in London and a new one to be opened in the United States later this year, we have been able to execute capacity building training for the staff of Chevron, NNPC, Warri, Department of Petroleum Resources, Nigeria Gas Company, Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company, Petroleum Training Institute and the Rivers State Board of Internal Revenue.

    The feedback from the above organisations has been overwhelming and we intend to do more especially in the area of building ownership culture amongst public servants in Nigeria to ensure staff motivation and consequently improve productivity. We have proposals in various ministries and banks and we are hopeful to go into partnership with quite a few banks and ministries soon. Collaborating with Cordros Capital in the area of Asset Management is also paving way for some institutions to retain our advisory services in an attempt to ensure increase in their net worth and more returns to stakeholders in the various institutions.

    We must not fail to also mention that we co-powered the first Warri Business Seminar in February this year with Klass and Korporate Consultants and Breakthrough Moment. This was a huge success. We intend to make this a yearly event and the purpose is to empower and equip individuals going into the business world in Delta State and also help business starters to get their feet firmly planted for better productivity. We were also able to incorporate Flobal LLC in Atlanta GA and we hope to go into partnership with some capacity building institutions abroad to build capacity especially as it relates to investment and asset management.

    Our plans within the next one year are to ensure we have customer base in excess of 3,000 from the current 300. We should be able to easily achieve this with the new internet online trading product to be launched in September 2015. We also plan to take our newly designed capacity building on ownership culture-Building Public Servant Commitment to a minimum of four states within the next one year with the objective of reaching out to the major key stakeholders in various ministries with the hope of having a paradigm shift to a culture of ownership among public servants in such states.

     

  • Don seeks economic diversification

    A DON has advised Gen. Muhammadu Buhari to diversify the economy.

    The Dean, Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Kaduna State University, Dr. Ahmad Abdul-Qadir, Abdul-Qadir, who spoke  with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Kaduna, said it was imperative to develop a long-term policy to regenerate the economy and it on the path of growth.

    “When the new administration takes over, it should have a good long-term policy that even after 20 years, successive administrations would be able to follow up the legacy,’’ he said.

    He said priority should be given to agriculture sector, including crop production, livestock, fisheries and forestry.

    According to him, some of the policies in the sector have become archaic and should be reviewed in line with modern practice.

    “The government should try to bring agriculture experts, especially soil scientists and work with them, so as to improve the sector,’’ he added.

    The university teacher also said that the incoming administration should review some laws to strengthen the fight against corruption.

    “The system breeds corruption. For example, if a public servant commits an offence, he or she is suspended, but if a lawmaker has a case, he or she is allowed to be part of the assembly until the determination of the case.

    “If they can also be suspended or their seats declared vacant for committing an offence, then corruption will reduce,” he argued.

    Abdul-Qadir also urged the incoming administration to address the problems in the energy sector to ensure steady power supply, so as to enhance the economy.

    “Every year, the government puts millions of naira into the refineries, yet the country cannot refine crude oil. We need electricity, so that the small and medium enterprises will pick up and the cost of production will go down.

    “By so doing, the economy will improve greatly and the importation of goods will reduce. With electricity, we will use less fire wood, which is having negative effects on our forests,’’ he said.

    The don also urged the President-elect to address insecurity, especially insurgency in the northeast and other crimes, such as kidnapping in some parts of the country.

    “I believe we can overcome insurgency since within a few weeks before the election, the government did something commendable and the efforts still continue,’’ he added.

    Abdul-Qadir urged Nigerians to be patient with the incoming government, as it needed to plan well in order to meet the high expectation of the citizenry.

  • CITN urges govt on economic diversification

    The Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) has urged the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) to diversify the economy through the instrumentality of taxes.

    Its President, Chief Mark Anthony Dike, said the apex tax body linked the victory of General Buhari to the belief, trust and confidence that Nigerians had in the change mantra that featured prominently during the process leading to his elections.

    Dike in a statement, said the approval and implementations of the Nigerian Tax Policy document (NTP) would revolutionise the tax system as an effective galvaniser of resources needed for developmental projects.

    He  reiterated the confidence of the citizens that under his (General Buhari’s) leadership, Nigeria will maintain political and civil stability, the economy will develop, the living standards of the people will appreciably rise, foreign relations will constantly expand and the country will register great success in its developmental strides.

    “Our Institute has meticulously studied the laudable programmes encapsulated in the manifesto of your party, the All Progressives’ Congress which you had always emphasised at all your campaign grounds across the nation. Some of those which caught our attention particularly are the readiness of APC to stabilise oil prices at $100 a barrel, provide free education to all, pay N5,000 every month to the poorest 25 million people, generate 40,000 megawatts of electricity in four years and payment of allowances to youth corps members, at least, a year after service,” the statement said.

    Dike said good as these programmes are, the success of their implementation depends more on the ability of the new government to generate adequate resources needed to bring them to fruition. Successive governments had largely depended on oil revenue to run the Nigerian economy. However, the fact on the ground now is that Nigeria’s over-reliance on oil revenue has only helped to place her at the mercy of some powerful nations whose economy and politics now dictate oil prices.

    He added that this unfortunate situation was further enhanced locally by the high rate of corruption, inefficiency of government officials, non-accountability of revenue, all which have assisted in the evolvement of informal taxation.

    He also observed the lopsidedness in the way and manner national honours were being used to celebrate ineptitude and moral decadence by giving the highest awards in the land to dubious and corrupt people, even when it was obvious that those people had not contributed anything to the corporate development of Nigeria.

    The Institute, he added, believed that tax compliance should be a major consideration for granting national honours.

    “Once there is an allegation of tax evasion against a nominee, such person should stand aside until he/she is cleared by a competent Court of the land. As a matter of necessity, our Institute want to recommend the institution of National Tax Compliance Honours to complement the existing ones,” he said.

    Dike further stated that CITN looks forward to partnering with the Buhari government not only in seeing to it that the tax system in Nigeria is run in the most professional and result-oriented manner that is necessary to providing the needed resources to realigning the Nigerian Economy to global reckoning but also to concert our efforts in the cause of peace and the brotherhood of all citizens of our great nation – Nigeria. “In due course, we shall be sending our positions on various issues in the Nigerian tax system for your consideration” he concluded.

     

  • FG restates commitment to diversification of economy

    FG restates commitment to diversification of economy

    Federal Government has reassured that it is committed to the diversification of the nation’s economic base.

    Vice President Namadi Sambo said the government is already looking beyond oil and gas revenue.

    He spoke on Monday at a Command Performance/Dinner in honour of participants of the ongoing Abuja National Carnival where he stood in for President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Sambo noted that Federal Government would continue to promote the rapid and sustainable growth of the tourism and culture sector of the national economy.

    The sector, he said provides economic development option with high capacity for economic empowerment, employment opportunities, poverty reduction as well as good returns on investment.

    He further noted that the sector had potentials to make Nigeria a number one tourists’ destination in the world.

    He said,”The laudable dreams that gave birth to the carnival have continued to motivate its annual celebration, anchored on the recognition that there exists a nexus between culture and the economic and technological growth of a nation.

    “The economic dimension of the carnival is quite exciting. It embraces a chain of activities ranging from street carnival, durbar, children fiesta, cultural night, traditional food fair and bush bar, boat regatta, command performance and contemporary music fiesta.

    “The sector provides economic development option with high capacity for economic empowerment, employment opportunities, poverty reduction as well as good returns on investment. It also has potentials to make Nigeria a number one tourists’ destination in the world.

    “Interestingly, the Abuja Carnival has proven to be one successful step in directing attention to the untapped huge investment opportunities in Nigeria’s exceptionally rich and diverse cultural and artistic heritage.”