Economic growth is dependent on technological development NISER

Category: Business Published on Wednesday, 23 January 2013 06:00

Public and private sectors need to focus on developing their technological base, rather than increasing capital investment, for Nigeria’s economy to grow, Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) Professor Olufemi Taiwo has said.

Taiwo, who made the statement at the sidelines of a dialogue meeting on Growth, Inequality and Poverty on Tuesday in Abuja said though the Nigerian economy was growing, poverty and income inequality had not improved appreciably.

He said the institute’s recent research showed that if the economy grows by 10 percent there would be an 11 percent reduction in poverty but if government is able to reduce income inequality by 10 percent poverty would even reduce further.

Taiwo said for this to happen, Nigeria needs to focus more on technology to increase production, expand the labour force and develop safety net welfare programmes.

“The labour force participation rate is low in Nigeria at around 60 percent which is one of the lowest in the world. We need to remove cultural hindrances in some regions of the country to bring more people into the labour force,” he said.

Taiwo said though there are welfare programmes in the country like SURE-P and NAPEP but they were ineffective because “we do not have the information base to target who the poor people really are.”