Nigeria's economy like all other economies of the world is vulnerable to crisis and nobody seems to have answer to the problems, Minister of Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said.

She said the nation's economy is particularly vulnerable because it is based on a single commodity (crude oil) through which it earns foreign exchange.

Okonjo-Iweala, who is also the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, spoke yesterday in Abuja at the opening of an International Tax Conference tagged "Taxation and Good Governance - A Recipe for Sustainable Growth," organized by the Joint Tax Board (JTB).

Referring to the crisis in Europe, America and Asia, the Minister said Nigeria must change its economic structure and reform its tax base for it to develop because it cannot continue to depend on outside world.


"As I came back from the IMF/World Bank meeting last week, all the Finance Ministers recognized that global environment is very uncertain and I noticed that nobody has the answer. What does these mean?" the Minister asked.

"It means that country like Nigeria that have one export and one commodity, the demand which depends on what happens on the outside world and with that kind of uncertainty, it means that we are also vulnerable in terms of lower demands and we are seeing the impact of that with the declining price of oil," she said.

She said that the need to diversify the economy is not an academic issue but a concrete one.

"For us it is becoming the real life and death issues as a nation and we need a change in the structure of the economy, improve the base of taxation because non-oil taxation in this country is one of the lowest in the world," the Minister said.

As a way of ensuring more money to the government, Federal Government announced on Tuesday the removal of oil subsidy, saying it cannot sustain about N1.3 trillion it pays on subsidy annually, this has attracted condemnation from stakeholders and the organized labour.

On Wednesday, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said they may allow the naira to depreciate if oil prices and foreign reserves continue to fall.

Nigeria's foreign reserves are now down to $31.7 billion as against $33 billion a month ago.

The CBN has been drawing from the reserves to protect the naira, a condition that International Monetary Fund (IMF), had considered inappropriate

http://allafrica.com/stories/201110070450.html

By the time this woman has finished with us ehhh . . . . . . .