…Economists warn: Nigerians will overtake Indians as world’s poorest people***
The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru has pledged to deepen his organisation’s support to indigenous companies and stakeholders, especially those operating in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
Baru indicated this on Wednesday in Abuja, in a statement issued by the NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division,
Mr Ndu Ughamadu, highlighting that Baru made the pledge while commissioning the Lagos Midstream Jetty (LMJ) at the Apapa Harbour in Lagos.
“NNPC will continue to support all players in the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry toward efficient product supply and distribution across the country,’’ he said, reiterating NNPC’s commitment to continuous collaboration with the private sector and urging the private companies to develop innovative and profitable solutions that would not only aid development, but ease the way of doing business.
He noted that the development of the much-needed critical infrastructure should not be seen as the sole responsibility of government.
“Good infrastructure plays a critical role in ending extreme poverty and increasing shared prosperity among the citizenry.
“The reality is that we all have a role to play in developing and moving the economy forward, an economy that will benefit us all today and generations yet unborn,’’ Baru said.
He commended Oando Plc for initiating the idea of the LMJ, saying the jetty was an encouraging example of Public Private Partnership (PPP).
The statement also quoted the Chairman OVH Energy, Mr Wale Tinubu as saying “the N54.4 billion worth LMJ was conceived as an innovative industry solution to the perennial challenges marketers faced in the importation of petroleum products’’.
“Today, we have delivered a first-class engineering piece that meets global standards.
“It is the first of its kind in the sub-Saharan Africa and will be of invaluable benefit to the industry and nation at large,” he said.
Tinubu also thanked the GMD for encouraging indigenous participation in the nation’s oil and gas industry.
Conceived by ASPM Ltd, a subsidiary of OVH Energy Ltd (an Oando Plc Licence), the LMJ is West Africa’s first privately owned mid-stream jetty located at the Lagos Apapa Harbour.
The LMJ will allow up to 45,000 Dead Weight (DWT) vessels to berth and discharge products while easing out congestion around the Apapa corridor.
The Jetty which is also available for the use of players in all sectors, including peers and competitors, is expected to boost the delivery of petroleum products to Terminals around the Apapa axis and the nation at large.
In the meantime, a non-governmental organisation in Vienna, World Poverty Clock, funded by the German government and led by Homi Kharas, deputy director of the Brookings Institution in the US, and Wolfgang Fengler, a World Bank lead economist, is predicting that Nigeria will overtake India as the country with one of the world’s poorest people.
A Financial Times’ report below revealed that an estimated 47m people, almost equivalent to the population of Colombia, are likely to escape extreme poverty this year. But that will not be enough to get anywhere near the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.90 a day at 2011 purchasing power parity prices — by 2030.
By 2030, there will be 200m fewer people living in extreme poverty than there are today. However, 438m, or 5 per cent of the world’s population, will still be below the extreme poverty line. This year, for example, the extreme poverty level is rising in 30 countries; in these nations a total of 9m more people will be living in extreme poverty at the end of 2017 than 12 months previously.
“Very few countries in Africa are making fast enough progress on ending poverty, and in two large countries, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, their populations are growing faster than their economic growth, so poverty will likely continue to rise,” Mr Kharas said. “We need a dramatic break from current trends in over 30 countries in order to end poverty worldwide.”
Nigeria’s population in extreme poverty is rising by 5.7 people per minute and that in DRC by 3.6 people per minute. The rest of Africa is reducing poverty by 4.7 people per minute. The situation in Nigeria is such that in February next year it will overtake India as having the most people living in extreme poverty in the world, at 82m, the clock predicts.
The forecasts are compiled from hundreds of data sets, including figures from national governments, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Mr Kharas said it was important to address the challenge, “not in global terms, and instead to look at it country-by-country”.
“We may be able to accept that small pockets of poverty remain in some countries — in fact some poverty is present even in the richest countries — but we want to avoid any individual countries, even ones with small populations, being in deep poverty,” he said.
The UN’s SDG is unlikely to be met because, globally, the rate of poverty reduction is slowing — largely on account of Asia getting close to ending extreme poverty. Meanwhile, many parts of Africa are making insufficient progress, the clock reveals.
The extreme poverty rate in Africa will drop from 34 per cent this year to 23 per cent in 2030, the clock predicts. But the absolute number is likely to be only slightly lower than what it is now because of population growth.
Additional report from The News
