CEO of Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismarck Rewane, has emphasised the imperative of building strong institutions if Nigeria must achieve the desired economic growth.
Rewane gave this insight as to the keynote speaker at the 2019 Time Management and Productivity/Nigeria’s Employee of the Year Award Summit (TAMS/NEYA Summit) held in Lagos. The TEMA/NEYA summit is organised yearly by SB Telecoms, a provider of time and attendance management system solutions to organisations.
Rewane, who spoke on the theme ‘Charting Nigeria’s Path to Growth,’ said there were three variables necessary for a sustainable economic growth: good leadership, sound policies and strong institutions, the most critical being strong institutions.
“Any two combinations of the three will still produce a level of growth. But where institutions are weak, whatever growth is achieved is not sustainable and will eventually come back to zero,” Rewane said.
According to Rewane, it is regrettable that Nigeria continues to trumpet its abundant potential due to the richness in human and natural resources, yet little is being done to harness this richness.
The country needs to urgently start to work on the famed potential to achieve economic growth, he said, stating that labour productivity in the country is very poor and that if that must be corrected to achieve GDP growth that is commensurate with our size and resources, then the economy must make hard choices.
“GDP growth can be achieved if we fix our weak infrastructure. The power sector problem, for instance, continues to be a huge burden with the sector hampered by enormous debt overhang and the inability to attract fresh financing. But this can easily be corrected if the debts are converted to equities,” he said.
The financial expert also called for a review or the elimination of the fuel subsidy regime and the restructuring of the exchange rate management to make it more efficient.
The TAMS Ambassador Award (as NEYA was known) was conceived four years ago by SB Telecoms as a platform to reward hard working and diligent workers across the country.
A summit was also instituted, the TAMS Summit & NEYA Awards to, among other things, highlight issues around employee performance, workforce productivity, and time management, and how they impact service delivery, operational efficiency, and resource optimisation across sectors in the economy.
And most importantly, the summit also publicly acknowledges the contributions of awardees to the productivity index in the country.
