The President of the World Bank Group,
Jim Yong Kim, said on Thursday that the bank had concentrated on the
northern region of Nigeria in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s
request.
Kim and the Managing Director,
International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, who spoke at separate
press conferences in Washington DC, United States, also advised Buhari
to invest in things that would enhance economic growth.
Kim said, “You know, in my very first
meeting with President Buhari he said specifically that he would like us
to shift our focus to the northern region of Nigeria and we’ve done
that. Now, it has been very difficult. The work there has been very
difficult.
“I think Nigeria, of course, has
suffered from the dropping oil prices. I think things are just now
getting better. But the conversation we need to have with Nigeria, I
think, is in many ways related to the theme that I brought to the table
just this past week, which is investment in human capital.
The
percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that Nigeria spends on
healthcare is less than one percent.”
He added, “Despite that, there is so
much turbulence in the northern part of the country, and there is the
hit that was taken from the drop in the oil prices.
Nigeria has to
think ahead and invest in its people. Investing in the things that will
allow Nigeria to be a thriving, rapidly growing economy in the future is
what the country has to focus on right now.”
Kim also said, “Focusing on the northern
part of Nigeria, we hope that as commodity prices stabilise and oil
prices come back up, the economy will grow a bit more. But very, very
much important is the need to focus on what the drivers of growth in the
future will be.”
According to the World Bank boss, the
bank will invest in human capital in other parts of Africa in order to
prepare the continent for the next phase of growth.
Lagarde, in her remarks, said Sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria, had posted suboptimal growth in recent times.
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