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The World Economic
Forum (WEF) yesterday said the troubles with Nigeria’s economy were
worsened by high corruption, poor socio-economic infrastructure and
other vices in the political system.

The Chief Economist
of WEF, Jennifer Blanke, who spoke yesterday at the opening of a
workshop on National Competitiveness in Abuja, said Nigeria should take
the issues of decay in its education system, poor infrastructure and
corruption very seriously if it is to move from its present 127th
position in the performance indicators of 139 countries recently
captured by the forum.

According to Mrs
Blanke, the country’s economic decline commenced since last year in the
areas of finance management and handling of corporate governance issues
in the financial system as well as the capital market, though she
admitted that the country has the opportunity to grow up in the
ranking, given the sophistication of businesses and the large market
that companies can benefit from.

She identified
specific areas Nigeria can focus on in order to further improve her
competitiveness, including improvement in governance issues,
development of strong currency institutions as well as improvement in
the quality of education and infrastructure.

“I don’t know if
there is any fast-track to achieving this goal. There are also issues
that one definitely needs to focus on that has to deal with government
corruption,” she said

Global watchdogs

The Minister of
State for Finance, Yabawa Lawan Wabi, said that countries all over the
world are increasingly becoming guided by the global competitiveness
ranking of other countries in their development processes, as compiled
and rendered by worldwide risk rating agencies, such as Fitch, Standard
and Poor as well as Goldman Sachs.

“As we all are
aware, several factors ranging from key economic indices, political
stability and democratic ideals, social infrastructure to security are
given significant weight in the determination of a country’s sovereign
risk rating and global competitiveness ranking by these agencies,” she
said.

The minister said the present administration is determined to put in
place, policies and programmes that would propel quick and positive
changes in Nigeria’s economic performance in the relevant areas, such
as domestic production, employment generation, power and energy,
education and health; deepening of our democracy, security and enabling
the right institutional and regulatory framework that will elevate
Nigeria’s National competitiveness.