₦airaland Forum

Larrynext:
Georgia is good as a country and their government is a serious one, this is reflected in the massive construction going on night and day, despite the fact that they are not as rich as the poorest state in nigeria. It is a rapidly developing country economically but Nigerians here as you know are spoiling the country's image.

This is obviously an Ill thought lie

grandstar:
Though it's the biggest in terms of GDP per state, it does not reflect in the lives of many of it's citizens.

Many are poor and housing is expensive. I feel too much regulation despite it's wealth is holding it back

By Western standards

post=70672338:
This is quite impressive

California's gdp is greater than that of the whole of Africa combined , this is more than impressive.

grandstar:
There was this story about Stalin.

Stalin slept randomly in any of the bedrooms in a 4bedrooms dacha for security reasons . There was also a soldier who patrolled the corridor all night

One night however, the soldier decided to take off his boots as they were noisy and he felt it would obviously be bothering Stalin.

Stalin become frightened when he did not hear sound of patrolling boots. He had the soldier shot the next day.

Stalin sef na paranoid weyrey

grandstar:
Yes o! Graduated long ago

Wooow !!!! Which course and which year did you graduate ?

grandstar:
I'll be honest, I did not read economics.

My love for economics developed by reading the Economist magazine. The Economist has been my favorite magazine since the age of 17 years.

The writers have a phenomenal understanding of economics and they say it has it. I love the Free Market which seems to be the most dominant now.

I also read other magazines such as Times, Bloomberg, Forbes and so on. Anything economics and current affairs I love and that includes local newspapers

I like reading. I buy Suya, I read the Suya "paper" or I ask the Suya man to cut a certain strip of his yet to be used paper if there's something of interest there

I also love the Internet. There's a deluge of information there.

When I was in Lag, there was an MD of a now definct bank teaching us a finance course. He'd ask an economic or finance related question and I'll be the only one answering. He was dumbfounded A lot of girls adored me


There was this other guy whose forte was knowing names. If you ask who was the MD of lever brothers in 1970, he'll give you the answer. That I found dumbfounding !


Thanks for asking! Appreciated

I believe Omohayek and 4play read economics,most likely overseas

U schooled in unilag ?

babythug:
....

God is great.

grandstar:
What do you mean stop studying western economists who's stock in trade is to keep third world countries perpetually poor? This is preposterous! That is completely wrong!

The US and EU gives duty free access to their economies. We can export most goods duty free. This is the biggest proof that they have your interest at heart. If Nigeria grabbed it with both hands it would be a prosperous nation.

The same ideas these Western economist promote are the same one's the Soludo's and Utomi's promote. Let's proceed however to other issues

The ban on cement led to Nigerians paying through the nose for cement and made Dangote a billionaire. Nigeria still massively imports sugar and I'm sure the average consumer is paying a premium for sugar now. Import bans most often simply increases the local price for the consumer. It is regressive in nature

Also research as shown that more jobs are lost than are gained with protectionism. The ban on cement which made cement very expensive adversely affected the amount of property that could have been built. For every job Dangote created in his factories I'm sure nothing less than 10 were lost in the larger economy.

The ban on rice is the most preposterous. The country has no comparative advantage whatsoever in rice production and that's why the country remained a net importer of large quantities of rice. For Nigeria to produce rice, sky high import duty has to be placed on it so that othewrwise cheaper imported rice is no longer affordable and people now have no choice to buy the really expensive local equivalent. Consumers are being ripped off. And for you info about 2m tons of rice is smuggled from Benin Republic and Cameroon into Nigeria annually. The government is losing huge revenue.

Many manufacturers simply left the country when some bans were introduced. The ban on access to forex from the Central Bank for importation of palm oil for instance chased some manufacturers from here to Ghana. These bans destroy critical supply chains for their business.

Turkey by the way is into customs union with the EU. That means goods from the EU enter it duty free yet its' textile and shoe industry
are booming.

You keep promoting redundant policies that has kept the country's manufacturing sector backwards. The best economist will lecture you that free trade is it. Protectionism simply forces you to pour resources into areas you have no comparative advantage in.

Ghana with an economy far more open to trade than Nigeria has a capacity utilisation of 65.8% compared to Nigeria's 54.8%. Benin Republic with it's open borders was 62.3%. So a countries manufacturing sector can still thrive with open trade.

But let me here focus on what matters.

A country does best when it focuses resources in areas it has comparative advantage. Let's take crude oil for instance.

What made Nigeria prosperous at one time was crude oil. It's something we have a natural comparative advantage in as it is found on the country's soil. Look at how much it has benefited the country. Let's go a bit further

Imagine if Nigeria fully developed its' oil industry. Imagine if the country was refining at least 3m barrels of crude oil daily, was the largest petrochemical producer in Africa as well as gas and fertilizer. Its oil services industry was also the most advanced in Africa and was also the largest producer and exporter of electricity in Africa. Now how big do you think the economy would be? Probably about 4-6 times it's present size.

Now imagine if Nigeria had 5 or 6 sectors like that? It would become a rich country! That is what makes country's prosperous.

Germany the largest exporter in Europe dominates many niches and sub-niches. You'd find a German Mittelsand controlling half the worlds supply of a certain product. And there are hundreds of companies like that in Germany.

It is time Nigeria focuses resources on areas it has comparative advantage. It has been said Nigeria could earn as high as $2b from the export of Shea butter for instance. This can easily pay for the imports of rice a product the country has no comparative advantage in.

What of snails? I'm sure the country can earn up to a $1bn from export of snails if not more. China will be a huge market for it. If the New Zealanders could teach the world to eat the kiwi fruit the same can be done with snails which are very healthy!

Protectionism has scored an F9 in industrialisng the country and any promotion of it in any guise will continue to get the same lamentable results.

What a really beautiful answer , thank you so much !!!!

jayfolarin:
Which is because Nigerian leaders (willingly or ignorantly) bought into the free-market storyline of the west! Local industries weren't allowed to grow and Nigerians were bombarded with foreign goods right, left and centre!

Nope , it's because the s.a.p required them to open up and the infant industries which were never ready to be competitive from day one were destroyed .

jayfolarin:
That both of you couldn't figure out that for a country to grow, it has to protect her local industry says how very little you know of economics. Even your open trade Western countries protect their local industries always (Recent case in point: donald Trump's trade war with China)

The problem with Nigeria is that it's infant industries have not grown up since 1960.

grandstar:
This so called economist must have been solely educated I'm Nigeria because most of them just have some head knowledge. They are the equivalent of the computer science graduates from the nation's public universities with little knowledge about computing. Just theory and book work

How can an economist say that the country is spending half of the budget deficit on imported textiles? What correlation does that have? The government isn't the one spending the money on importing the textiles. Textile importers simply source the forex from the CBN and they pay for it! They didn't dash them this money or lent it to them.

If I sell you $500,000 at 360 to a $1 and you pay me 180m and you use the $500,000 to import textiles and the ship carrying it capsizes and you lose all stock, that one no concern me. I don collect my 180m

This ban from the CBN will simply put massive pressure on the black market and there'll be a massive gap between it and the investor window down for forex.

A government trying to fight corruption should do it's utmost for all business to be done above ground and not below it where corruption is bound to thrive.

Also,there's nothing wrong in importing textiles. How will the textile factories be competitive when there's inadequate power and high lending rates. This is doomed to fail from the word go. The Bank of Industry lent them 200b in the past which I'm sure a good chunk we t down the drain

It's time government focused on an export or perish mentality because that's the proper way to industrialise and not through import substitution which forces you to pour resources on areas lack comparative advantage.

What kind of third world country is this that does not have a textile sector that is a massive exporter of textiles and garments? If the nation has failed in that, it shows there are deep-rooted problems why the textile industry is dormant here.

Again , just like the same nonsense with rice.


Nigeria is very very anti trade.

grandstar:
I love what you just wrote.

I have ways argued that countries can grow fast despite corruption that what is important is pro-growth policies. Most Nigerians exxaggerate the damage corruption. If not, Atiku would have won the election. He had pro-business policies but in the North he is simply seen as a thief while Buhari has the tag "Mai Gaskiya" meaning righteous one.

Taiwan, Greece and many other would have stayed dirt poor if corruption was as ruinous as portrayed.

Even china that is by far more corrupt than Ghana has made a lot of massive strides in growing their economy.

Vblunt:
Haven followed this thread for more than a year, I decided to make my first post.

One of my favorite combos. Beans + ripe plantain + vegetable for dinner.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth

This looks like it's from heaven

grandstar:
The strength of an economy is not based solely on the quality of infrastructure it has or else Taiwan and Italy would never have become rich countries.

Companies in developing countries can still thrive with poor infrastructure. 2 examples today are India and Pakistan.

I have always argued that for the country to hit 7% growth rates now, it would need structural reforms.

Anyway, Buhari's exchange controls using the words of Charles Soludo simply made a "bad matter worse.". That's my anger with Buhari

I wrote off this government within a month of taking over. He arbitrarily fixed the exchange rate at 197 to a $ without regard to market forces. He thought wicked economist were the ones that determined exchange without regard to the masses. It's like thinking that mathematicians that determined that 1+1= 2. They are simply interpreting what nature says. The same with economists.

Diversifying exports is very important but commercial lending rates of 25% does the most damage to businesses in the real sector and not even infrastructure. Dangote said how can the country have a thriving agricultural sector with leading rates at 20%?

Low lending will enable manufacturers for instance import world beating machinery that would make them competitive. Productivity is very low because of the high cost of credit. If Nigeria was a mine, it would be artisanial with corresponding low levels of credit. Low credit would enable them to keep expanding until the local market is too small and exports are the only option.

The only way non-oil exports can boom now until lending rates are brought down is through foreigners setting up factories and mines. FDI tends to target areas the country has comparative advantage.

Angola was badly governed by Dos Santos so it's not a surprise. This is a country with about 20m people producing about 2m barrels of crude oil daily but can't balance it's budget.

Venezuela since 2003 to me has been a basket case only it wasn't discernible . It is not until you marry f G that you realise she's not wife material. The signs were
already there from the word go.

FG can bring down lending rates to single digits levels by ending the "Naira substitution" policy.
Google " Ending Naira substitution policy by Henry Boyo".

Foreign investors can be lured to invest by slashing corporate taxes to no more than 15%. FG must also end multiple exchange as it screams economic incompetence to foreign investors.

But @ grandstar. How come even with the multiple exchange rates , we have still been getting fdi inflows

grandstar:
In rich countries, farming accounts for barely 3% of their GDP. It is not a place of succour for unemployed graduates.

The economy needs to grow by 7% annually to create enough jobs for those entering the labour market annually. The economy has barely grown 1% since Buhari came into office compared to the 6% prior to that.

No country becomes rich with lamentable growths rates like the ones the country now has. Telling all unemployed graduates to suck it up in the face of massive unemployment and take to farming will not make the country richer but actually poorer.

If the agriculture sector growth outpaces that of manufacturing or services, it is indicative of regressive growth and in the long term,the country will become agrarian again.

This is actually a thing of pride for buhari for some awkward reason.

grandstar:
Please told them. Please tolded them

They will keep saying they used the money looted to develop the West.

No looted funds is stored in Japan or Gremany but are the 3rd and 4th largest economies in the world.

The budget of New York City is triple Nigeria's budget. The budget of Britain is twice as large as Nigeria's GDP.. People just make blanket statements that can't be backed up by facts.

No matter how u tell them , they will never listen.many of them have this mentality that we are actually richer than u.s and other developed countries.

grandstar:
If they had done otherwise, the situation would have been far worse.

Also, Russia was more reliant on crude oil than Nigeria was. The Economist said all their growth was dependent on oil. That was not the case in Nigeria.

Russia needs serious reforms and under Putin the populist, I doubt very much it will happen

All our growth actually was dependent on the oil .

If not so , what else ?

grandstar:
Partially. The recession could have been avoided if Buhari had not introduced capital control policies which simply made a bad matter worse.

If Buhari left things as they were, there would have been 3 possible scenario

1. A downturn in the economy.

2. A mild recession

Afterwards the economy would have enjoyed growth rates of 4% by 2017. It would have escaped the severe recession lasting 6 consecutive quarters and the present slow recovery.

I feel the economy needs some structural reforms for it to grow faster than 4% now. The truth is high oil price is still an important driver of growth in Nigeria

But Russia left things as they were , and they still ended up as bad as Nigeria

grandstar:
Russia was overly dependent on it's commodities especially crude oil for it's economic growth and also overly dependent on imports of almost everything else. This signaled that Russia needed to liberalise and deregulate more of it's economy.

Russia has one of the highest rates of highly educated people in the world. It should be a scientific powerhouse for instance but it's far from that. It could leverage on it's defence industry like Israel and become a respectable technological hub.

The crash of the oil price was the primary cause of the recession and not the devaluation. Had it not allowed the Rouble to float, the foreign reserves would have been wiped clean. They had learnt their lesson in 2019 when oil price crashed to $35 and their Central Bank blew $200b defending the currency because it left it at an overvalued rate. They were better prepared for a price fall this time.

The Economist magazine way way before the crash lamented that Russia's economic growth was simply fuelled by the price of crude oil. We're it to crash as it finally did, it would take the economy with it.

For real growth to restart, Russia needs to liberalise it's economy, set up business incubators, get rid of Putin, get sanctions on it lifted, give back Crimea to Ukraine, improve it's Ease of Doing Business and most importantly entrench the Rule of Law

Exactly just like ours too !!

grandstar:
Russia was overly dependent on it's commodities especially crude oil for it's economic growth and also overly dependent on imports of almost everything else. This signaled that Russia needed to liberalise and deregulate more of it's economy.

Russia has one of the highest rates of highly educated people in the world. It should be a scientific powerhouse for instance but it's far from that. It could leverage on it's defence industry like Israel and become a respectable technological hub.

The crash of the oil price was the primary cause of the recession and not the devaluation. Had it not allowed the Rouble to float, the foreign reserves would have been wiped clean. They had learnt their lesson in 2019 when oil price crashed to $35 and their Central Bank blew $200b defending the currency because it left it at an overvalued rate. They were better prepared for a price fall this time.

The Economist magazine way way before the crash lamented that Russia's economic growth was simply fuelled by the price of crude oil. We're it to crash as it finally did, it would take the economy with it.

For real growth to restart, Russia needs to liberalise it's economy, set up business incubators, get rid of Putin, get sanctions on it lifted, give back Crimea to Ukraine, improve it's Ease of Doing Business and most importantly entrench the Rule of Law

This kind of means that the main cause of the nigeriamn recession was the fall in oil price , do you agree ?

grandstar:
Please learn to accept constructive criticism.

I wrote off this government within a month of his ascendency to power once he pegged the exchange rate. I knew the country was in the hands of someone with a lamentable understanding of economics.

Utomi, Soludo and especially Lamido Sanusi condemned his economic pilicies. Lamido said there's nowhere in the world these policies have worked!

Please Google Sanusi condemns Buhari's policies. Also do the same for Soludo and Utomi.

Buhari brought this upon himself. Growth in the next 4years will average at most 3.5% a year compared to the 6% prior to May 29, 2015

But @grandstar , how come the devaluation of the Russian ruble caused a recession swiftly. Doesn't that mean whether the currency was devalued or not , Nigeria economy was headed to collapse.

BuhariAdvocate:
obasanjo by now

grandstar:
The collapse in oil price did affect the country bit Buhari's "corrective" policies made things far worse plunging the country into a deep recession.

You talk about productivity? How will productivity be high when the lending rate is in double digits? This to me is the biggest killer of productivity in the country. How can industrialist import world beating machinery that would make them very competitive? If they were, it will eventually be AMCONed.

Dangote said how can agriculture they've with lending rate at 20%. Costly credit has a more damaging effect than the dearth of power or good roads.

It is not just that credit is expensive but unnecessary so. Nigeria for years has maintained low budget deficits so the lending rate should be in single digits

Henry Boyo, an economist, blames the high cost of credit on the Naira subsitution policy. Google it

@grandstar , during the era of fdi inflows to Asia , why didn't fdi flow into Africa , despite the fact that both were poor continents with low literacy rate ?

eyinjuege:
Bon appetit

Blood of zedekiah

If this one is as meek as emeliefe , we are in trouble.

grandstar:
How? With an economy growing at 2% per year or let me generous 4%? Buhari has not achieved 2% throughout his term. The Abacha years beats his

And worst part is that oil is never picking up to pdp era cost.

omohayek:
If I told you to bring USD $1,000 of your own money to invest in a venture at N360 to USD $1, but that I would only give you back your investment and your share of the profits at N180 to USD $1, would you agree?

Buhari’s attempt to dictate the external value of the Naira is as pointless as if he tried to tell market-women how much to sell their wares for, with the results in both situations being the same: a shortage of whatever it is whose price is being capped.

Funny enough he admitted that he didn't understand what the economists were telling him. He said he was neither an economist nor a business man.

Adagworo:
Atiku takes wide lead in Anambra
February 25, 2019

The People’s Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has taken a major lead in the ongoing collation of results in Anambra State.

The PDP vice presidential candidate, Peter Obi, is from Anambra state.

Results so far announced from 13 of 21 local government areas show that Mr Abubakar is leading with about 296,711 votes.

PDP polled 317,767 votes from the results announced so far at the INEC state headquarters in Awka, the state capital, while APC polled 21,056.

At 4.30 a.m. Monday morning, Francis Ogbonnaya Otunta, the Vice-Chancellor of Michael Okpara University, announced a break to continue at 11 a.m.

Below is how both candidates fared in Anambra so far

Okowa Campaign AD

ANAOCHA LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC:1055
PDP: 30655

DUNUKOFIA LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC:1452
PDP:17270

ANAMBRA WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 2428
PDP: 15384

NJIKOKA LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC:967
PDP:.28364

OYI LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1272
PDP: 20977

ANAMBRA EAST LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 6755
PDP:13422

ORUMBA SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC:761
PDP:18867




AWKA SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1435
PDP:40099

AWKA NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1134
PDP: 15755

NNEWI NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1524
PDP: 34260

ONITSHA SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 905
PDP: 29795

IHIALA LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1382
PDP: 34307

AYAMELUM LOCAL GOVERNMENT
APC: 1458
PDP: 18642

Total: APC- 21056
PDP- 317767


https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/ssouth-east/316057-atiku-takes-wide-lead-in-anambra.html

See flogging

Goke7:
how did PMB sank the economy? am open to this debate cos I think this narrative is false. Lots of misconceptions out there, yea we were in recession but we came out of it, so how did the economy sink? Despite this false narrative by the pdp, they have struggled in places where we expected a clean sweep.

He sank the economy by refusing to devalue the naira . For some reason buhari didn't know that the precious naira he sought to devalue was already devalued on the black market . This lead to a massive capital flight .companies shut down . Inflation was roaring.

omohayek:
Only in a backward sh*hole like Nigeria does one find politicians stupid enough to openly talk of a region "betraying" them by voting for someone else, as if the voters were the ones with an obligation to the politicians, rather than the onus being on the politicians themselves to show themselves deserving of voter support!

If Buhari has failed to receive the same support from the SW as he did in 2015, then he has only himself to blame; he waited 6 months to appoint a cabinet when he should have been ready to do so on the day of his election, he then spent most of the following year receiving treatment in London for a mystery illness he's still yet to disclose, and on his return he capped this dismal record by insisting on a wrong-headed "strong Naira" policy that drove away FDI and sank the economy. Just because he gave "juicy" appointments to a few lucky politicians, and borrowed lots of Chinese money to start work on a railway line that ought to have been completed before the unviable Kaduna-Abuja portion, a few northern political hacks think all Yorubas should be ignoring the economic wreckage Buhari has wrought?

Given Buhari's atrocious record, by all rights this election should have been a walkover for the PDP, if only they'd bothered to select a new face with credibility. Luckily for Buhari and his camp, the PDP insisted on repeating its old mistakes by selecting Atiku, another septuagenarian with a well-earned reputation for misusing his offices for self-enrichment. It's almost as if the PDP bigwigs were deliberately trying to guarantee Buhari another 4 years!

At times the way Nigerians act clannish bothers me.

At the rate at which things are going , I wonder if we will even get to Indias level in the next 50 years.

[quote author=martineverest post=76100312]this is 2019.,even PDP is wining south west,APC could win south South[/quote
Highly unlikely and besides South West has been neither here nor there.

Slimbumzky:
What have they benefitted from the Senate President?

And the reason Nigeria is like this today is because of too many mumus like him