Moving the Nigeria’s economy from a mono stance towards a robustly diversified type – Lessons from Brazil and China Experiences?
Working Paper
The need to diversify the Nigerian economy has now become more urgent than ever before. Against this backdrop, this brief examines Nigeria diversification drive with a view to drawing lessons from Brazil and China Experiences. From both countries, we learned that; there is the need to link universities and companies in Nigeria, encourage domestic savings by government and individuals to provide finance for the execution of large investments in critical physical capital, prudent macroeconomic policies and relatively coherent set of predictable and stable regulations governing private investment are critical to diversification drive in Nigeria, there is also need to align and coordinate fiscal and monetary policies, among others. Based on the findings, a number of recommendations are presented; That based on the China and Brazil experience, National Assembly may wish to initiate a stakeholders meeting, comprising the academia and industrialists on the need to encourage researchers to make their research output more problem solving oriented. The National Assembly should legislate that any government in power should allocate at least 15% (UNESCO recommends 26%) of annual budget to education and put in place mechanisms for its prudent management. Rather than relying on the executives to place ban on importation of certain goods into the country, the relevant National Assembly Committees should push for legislations that prohibit the importation of goods that can be produced locally. In doing this, the Committee should cause the relevant government agencies (NAFDAC, SON, among others) to ensure that quality of such made in Nigeria goods are not compromised. We recommend for judicious utilization of capital releases by the different sectors just as it is done in China and Brazil. The National Assembly through its oversight function should ensure 100% utilization of capital released. As it was the case under SKUKU while seeking for loans, borrowings may be tied to capital project(s). The cost, implementation period and location of such project(s) should be part of the approval request letter to be sent to the National Assembly.