New Telegraph

Ahmed: FG committed to improved economic diversification

The Federal Government has expressed its commitment to improve on the diversification of the economy by steadily growing other sectors particularly the commodity trading ecosystem. The assurance was given by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, during the presentation of gold coin to her by the Lagos Futures and Commodities Exchange in Abuja. Ahmed expressed her pleasure at the presentation as she stated that it was one of the results of Federal Government’s commitment in improving the economic diversification agenda. She said: “This is really very pleasing for me because we have been trying to improve the diversification of the Nigerian economy. People say we need to diversify the economy, but the Nigerian economy is truly diversified. “Our GDP today has 6.4 per cent contribution from the oil and gas sectuestor, so 94.6 per cent of the Nigerian economy is from other sectors. One of the sectors that we have been trying to activate the full potentials is the mining sector.

“The mining sector today is still very small, but that is on the side of government. But in the private sector and now I am glad in the states, there is very active mining activities that is taking place. “Unfortunately, until now, we have not been getting the full value of the mining activities. Mining activities have been largely artisanal, there is a lot of participants that take out our minerals without reporting it, without government or even the miners getting full value for it.

“The Minister stated that in a bid to get the full value of mining activities in the country, the President approved and setting up of the Presidential Gold Mining Scheme with the Solid Minerals Development Agency leading. “They had set up a pilot that started from Kebbi State where they supported the artisanal miners to be able to practise better mining practices and also to off take the minerals that they mine, and do some first level refining. Then the Central Bank offtakes this and sends it out of the country for proper mining.

“The essence for us is to begin to hold our reserves in minerals like gold so that our reserves are not all in US dollars. We know what happens to US dollars and what can happen to it. We are beginning to have our reserves in gold”. In his remarks, Director- General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Lamido Yuguda, commended the Minister and the Federal Government on their determination to bequeath a vibrant commodities sector. He stated that “LCFE is into a number of commodities and gold is just one of them.”

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