UBA Africa Conversations: WTO Boss Okonjo- Iweala Reveals How To Get Out Of Economic Mess Created By Pandemic

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director General the World Trade Organization (WTO) has revealed how to return to the road to economic growth and prosperity disrupted by the pandemic known as Covid-19.

Okonjo-Iweala provided the solutions at this year’s edition of UBA Africa Conversations.

The event is an annual initiative of UBA PLC, a leading Pan-African financial institution, offering banking services to more than twenty-five million customers, across over 1,000 business offices and customer touchpoints, in 20 African countries.

Okonjo’s Iweala was one of the panelists at the 2021 edition which had Tony Elumelu, the champion of everything positive about Africa and the Group Chairman of UBA as moderator.

The WTO headperson explained that the way out of the crippling economic disruption imposed by the scourge of Covid-19 is two pronged; the immediate and longer term.

The 66year old who made history as the first woman and African to hold her current position disclosed that after having the health problems under control, the first step is to get economic stimulus into the economies of African nations.

“The developed countries are recovering very fast because they have been able to implement massive amount of fiscal stimulus into their economy for rich countries 28% of GDP, the emerging market 6.9% and for poorer country just 2%.so, if we want to recover this is why it is important the whole discussion we are having on restructuring debt and space, giving African economy fiscal space to breath so that they can invest not only on the health side but on the economic side, This is how we are going to recover.” She pointed out.

The history maker who assumed office as WTO D.G on March 1, 2021 explained further “The Good news is that our presidents , like President Kagame they have been pushing for the issuance of new SDR (Special Drawing Rights) at the international monetary fund. $650b has now been agreed, Africa would get $34B but more may be allocated, we can use this to help implement more fiscal stimulus so that our economies can have the ability to recover, of that we should some for the liquidity of the private sector, you know that in rich countries private sector have had access to credit and liqiity and small and medium enterprises have been able to recover, we need to do that too.”

Still on the short term measure on how to return to the road to prosperity, Okonjo-Iweala disclosed that “ Second, to look at how to revive the services sectors many of our countries depend on tourism and some of our countries depend on logistics like aviation in Ethiopia, how to get these industries revived using these resources is very important ..We can get them going, these are all in the short term.”

Speaking on the long term measure in getting out of the economic mess brought about by Covid-19 during the event monitored by societynow.ng, the Former Minister for Finance (Nigeria) stated that “..in the longer term or medium term, we know we have to diversify our economies, we are too vulnerable to movements in commodity prices. You have seen it during this pandemic, the commodities we depend on have seen a lot of fluctuations be it minerals or oil or gas, so much fluctuations.

“Actually those that are doing better on the continent are those with diversified economy, we need to do that in the longer term and of course, take advantage of the African free trade area to specialize some of our countries in production, trade more with each other and also trade more with the outside (world).”

Okonjo-Iweala made the revelations at the UBA Africa Conversations monitored by societynow.ng in response to a question by moderator, Tony Elumelu regarding how actions that must be taken by African leaders to address the situation brought by the pandemic and catalyze growth.

Other members of the UBA Africa Conversations 2021 panel aside Okonjo-Iweala were Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation(WHO) and Mr. Makhtar Sop Diop, Managing Director, International Finance Corporation(IFC) and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.