By ‘Dotun Akintomide
The federal government on Monday said security challenges in the embattled regions of North Central and North East of the country largely contributed to a downward growth in the agriculture sector as seen in the 2018 second quarter GDP report released by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Conmenting on the NBS report, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma in a statement regretted that there was a drop in real GDP growth rate for the second quarter.
He said the weaker growth in the Agriculture sector which slowed to 1.19% in the second quarter of 2018 compared to 3.0% in the first quarter of 2018 is causing concerns for the Federal Government.
This he partly blamed on security challenges mainly in the North East by the Boko Haram’s onslaught in agrarian villages, as well as the farmers-herders crisis in North Central which had led to destruction of farm produce by the marauding Fulani herdsmen, ensuring farmers cannot go to farms for fear of being lynched.
“These security challenges affected activities of farmers with impact on commodity output,” he said.
Udoma said the various measures being taken by the government to tackle the situation is already reducing incidents of violent conflicts and other disruptions to farming activity.
He, however, added that Federal Government is encouraged by the growth recorded in the non-oil sector.
“The Minister regretted that there was a slight drop in real GDP growth rate for Q2, principally as a result of the contraction in the oil sector. The Oil and Gas sector contracted by -3.95% in Q2 2018 compared to a growth rate of 14.77% recorded in Q1 2018 and 3.53% in Q1 2017.
“FG is encouraged by the continuing growth recorded in the non-oil sector, which grew by 2.05% in Q2 of 2018,” he said.
The Minister said the 2.05% growth in the non-oil sector represents the strongest growth in the non-oil GDP since the fourth quarter of 2015. This he noted was evident that the implementation of the targeted policies and programs of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) is yielding positive results.
According to the NBS report, the non-oil growth was driven by transportation –road, rail, water and air.
The Minister stressed that the focus of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) is on diversifying the economy away from dependence on the oil and gas sector and was encouraged that efforts are yielding fruits by the continuing growth in the non-oil sector.
