The National Planning Commission has said that agriculture contributed N348.7 billion to the nation’s economy in 2012, as against N335.18 billion recorded in 2011. The figure is contained in the 2012 Performance Report on the nation’s economy issued in Abuja by the commission. The report noted that the sector’s value added stood at N348.7 billion in 2012, compared with N335.18 billion recorded in 2011, indicating a growth rate of 3.97 per cent as against 5.64 per cent in 2011.
It added that “the contribution of agriculture to overall real Gross Domestic Product Growth was 24.25 per cent in 2012, compared with 31.04 per cent in 2011.
“Growth was led by crop production, which accounted for 20.46 per cent of the overall economic growth in 2012, compared with 27.41 per cent in 2011.’’ It stated that the slowdown in the sub-sector’s contribution to growth in 2012 was due to security issues in some parts of the north that adversely affected agricultural production and marketing.
Flooding had also affected the productivity of the sector in 2012, it added.
The report showed that the Federal Government’s initiatives to improve agriculture and investments had not been significantly felt due to security challenges and that food imports were taking huge amounts of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
“In the first quarter of 2012 alone, more than 1.4 billion U.S. dollars (N221.2 billion) was spent on food imports, compared with 1.11 billion U.S. dollars ((N168.75 billion) in the first quarter of 2011, indicating a growth of 26.6 per cent,’’ it said
The commission stressed the need for the nation to learn from the success stories of China and India that exited from being food importers to exporters in the last 30 years.
