Research Document: Nigeria's Private Sector in Turbulent Time: Mitigating Risks and Positioning for Economic Tranformation

Posted Thu, Feb 29, 2024 3:03 PM

Economic transformation is underpinned by the profound objectives of fostering long-term sustained economic growth, catalysing job creation, and alleviating poverty through the continuous structural process of evolving and improving productivity across sectors. Nigeria’s economic growth over the past decade has been fragile, vulnerable, and devoid of shared prosperity for the people.

The economic performance has been marred by low investment, low productivity, docile real sector performance, macroeconomic instability, and worsening poverty. While the government has a considerable role in reforming and investing in critical areas of the economy to support economic growth and transformation, the private sector has a much more significant role in driving sustained economic growth. This is because the businesses and firms that make up the private sector are responsible for providing much-needed investments across sectors of the economy, creating jobs, innovating and developing new technologies, providing solutions to social problems and creating channels for government tax income to provide public goods. Statistically, the private sector is responsible for over 80 percent of investment mobilised yearly. Hence, the role of the private sector in socioeconomic progress must be considered.