NAIJ news — Jim Yong Kim, the President of the World Bank Group, has reported that this financial organization had concentrated in the northern region of Nigeria in line with official Buhari’s request.
The Managing Director of International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, and Jim Yong Kim spoke together at the separate press conferences in Washington DC. They advised the Nigerian President to invest mainly in those things which would improve economic development.
“In my very first meeting with the President of Nigeria, he told me that he would want us to move the focus to the northern region of Nigeria, and we have already done that. Now the work there has been challenging. I think Nigeria has suffered from the dropping oil prices. I think things are just now getting better. However, the conversation we need to have with Nigeria is in many ways connected to the theme that I brought to the table just this past week, which is the investment in human capital. The percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that Nigeria spends on healthcare is less than 1%,” the President of the World Bank Group declared during the meeting.
As NAIJ News informs, Kim added that there was so much confusion in the northern part of Nigeria, and there was the definite hit that was taken from the oil prices drop. The World Bank President also emphasized that Nigeria had to invest in its people.
“You must invest only in those things that will undoubtedly allow your country to be a thriving, rapidly growing economy in the future is what the country has to focus on right now,” told Kim to President of Nigeria.
Kim added that while concentrated on the northern part of Nigeria, the World Bank hopes that as with the stabilization of commodity prices, oil cost comes back up. Therefore, the entire economy will grow faster.
According to Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank will invest in human capital in other parts of Africa to organize the continent for the next growth phase.
In her remarks, Christine Lagarde told that Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan countries in Africa had posted suboptimal growth recently. However, considering the substantial demographic potential of Nigeria, the growth figures were far too small.
Consequently, the International Monetary Fund would engage ministers of finance and central bank governors from the region attending the yearly World Bank and IMF meetings on how they could enhance the economic growth.
“The Sub-Saharan Africa is one region of the world where growth is suboptimal. Those countries grow at an average growth of 2.5%. That is too low for the demographic expansion of the region,” concluded Lagarde.
Source: NAIJ news
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