The Buhari Media Organization (BMO) has again urged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its chairman Uche Secondus to acquire some basic education on economics in order to avoid making “dumb, crapulous” comments on important issues.
The group gave the advice in its reaction to PDP’s statement urging the Federal Government to allow the private sector to drive the country’s economy as a sign that the PDP National Chairman is an illiterate who does not understand the fundamentals of economics.
In a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, copy of which was sent to The DEFENDER on Tuesday, BMO said it is apparent that what the government has been doing over the past three years has been lost on the main opposition party.
“One would have thought it would be clear to the PDP how robustly the government has been engaging businesses, especially the private sector.
“For the first time in the history of this country, more money from the banks are going to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), especially through an increase in Loan-to-Deposit Ratio (LDR) of banks from 60 to 65 per cent, principally to create access to credit for either existing businesses or new ones. The loan-to-Deposit policy of the CBN has continued to increase banks’ credit to the private sector in a bid to drive lending to the real sectors.
“It is worthy to note that between June 2019 and March 2020, more than N3trillion new credits were given out to businesses in the private sector and this is the first time ever in the history of Nigeria that this would happen. The quantum of funds directed at the private sector is the highest in the history of this country because of the financial developmental policy deployments by the CBN under the directive of President Muhammad Buhari”
“Companies with an annual turnover of less than N25m exempted from paying tax represent more than 25 million registered companies in Nigeria. These exemptions will lead to more funds available for these companies to reinvest, grow, expand and create more jobs. These are creative ways of enabling businesses, and by extension, creating jobs.
“On the issue of food security raised by the PDP, we make bold to say that if the President had not insisted on Nigerians eating what they grow, we would have been in unmanageable crisis at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic when countries that were our traditional suppliers of food shut their borders and stopped exportation of food items from them.
“The President had engaged with the recent food security council where appropriate strategies were evolved to attend to issues bordering of food security”.
According to the BMO, the establishment of MSMEs Clinics which have so far benefited over 392,000 businesses in the country is a small Business support programme to assist entrepreneurs and small businesses in different states, so is the establishment of One-Stop-Shops to support policies on Ease of Doing Business. 618,309 business entities were registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) between 2016 and 2018.
“The launch of the new Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has also provided medium and long term loans to MSMEs, the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme has helped smallholder farmers in creating over 250,000 direct jobs for farmers and up to 1.25m indirect jobs”.
“We advise the PDP to follow the President Buhari-led administration as it continues to grow Nigeria into an economic power not only in Africa but in the world”, the statement added.
