Recession Can’t End in Three Months

The President Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Tony Ejinkeonye has disagreed with the Federal Government’s promise to end recession by December this year.

Ejinkeonye who was reacting to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) claim that the country’s economic recovery would begin in the last quarter of the year, in a statement said it takes a minimum of five years for any country to recover from economic recession.

He said: “Federal Government had no physical measures in place to determine that the country would be out of the woods in the next three months.

“We have economic recession, economic recovery and economic boom. It takes a period of five years for a country to recover from recession before it can start talking of economic boom, that is, if the right measures are in place.

“We are yet to know the physical measures the government has put in place to enable Nigerians know that they are on the right track.

“Even when the right decisions and policies are set out, we do not agree that recovery will come too soon.”

According to him, government is not doing what it should do, stressing that countries such as Thailand went into recession and came out of it last year. He said the Federal Government was either being economic with the truth or not telling the citizens the things that are happening to the economy.

He added that unless the Federal Government had a short term programme that will check the current economic hardship, ending the crisis by December might be a mirage.

“There are no structures on ground to suggest that it would happen. I do not think it is going to happen soon; it then means they have only one quarter to get us out of a recession that is so deep. We do not believe that. It will take a while,” he said.