The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said Nigeria is “few weeks” away from the yoke of economic recession.
Speaking at the biennial convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Lagos on Saturday, Mohammed said going by a recent statement by the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, the country would be out recession by the end of June.
The minister who was represented by the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Bayo Onanuga, said: “There have been other pointers for the good news as well. For two consecutive months, the National Bureau of Statistics has also reported a fall in inflation rate.
“The exchange rate is regaining some sanity.
“ As I said earlier, the worst appears to be over. We are clawing out of the woods of recession in weeks from now.
“I hope, in our various media, we shall begin to focus more on the positive developments in our economy, the growth in agriculture and mineral development, since the NBS last year, let out the secret that the Nigerian economy recorded a negative growth in the first quarter of 2016, “ he said.
The minister argued further that recession is not peculiar to Nigeria, adding that the United States of America had also experienced 47 recessions, some regressing into depression.
“Between 1980 and 2007 alone, the American economy experienced five recessions. The last one in 2007 was caused by the subprime mortgage crisis and led to the collapse of the US housing bubble,” he said.
