Leadership, Policy Making, and Economic Growth in African Countries : The Case of Nigeria
Nigeria's long-run growth performance has been extremely poor. Between 1960 and 2000, real income per capita grew at only 0.43 percent per year. The situation improved between 2001 and 2006 when real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gre...
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Format: | Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/257751468288951249/Leadership-policy-making-and-economic-growth-in-African-countries-the-case-of-Nigeria http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28049 |
Summary: | Nigeria's long-run growth
performance has been extremely poor. Between 1960 and 2000,
real income per capita grew at only 0.43 percent per year.
The situation improved between 2001 and 2006 when real per
capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average
annual rate of 4.2 percent. This paper demonstrates that the
superior growth performance during 2001-06 is largely
attributable to the impact of better leadership and economic
policy making. The improved performance of the economy after
2003 arose from implementing a comprehensive economic reform
program focusing on four main areas: macroeconomic reform;
structural reform; governance and institutional reform; and
public sector reform. The reforms, backstopped by improved
oil revenue management, monetary policy implementation, and
debt management, improved overall macroeconomic policy
making. This resulted in real GDP growth averaging 7.1
percent per year between 2003 and 2006, an inflation rate of
10 percent in 2006, foreign exchange reserves of US$45
billion in 2006, and total external debt of only US$5
billion in 2006. Clearly, between 1960 and 2000,
Nigeria's policy choices were poor, and the reforms
that sought to correct them were plagued by inconsistencies,
policy reversals, and lack of coherence. In contrast, due to
good leadership, the reforms adopted in 2003 were consistent
and have been implemented in a coherent manner. |
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