Proceedings of the 2nd (Hybrid) International Conference, Faculty of Social Sciences, Niger Delta University, Held on March 13, 2024
March, 2024
Pages 469-488
DOI: 10.36108/wjss/ConfP.2024.026
SECTORAL PERFORMANCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR POVERTY REDUCTION
Better Jack
Abstract
The study examined the impact of sectoral performance on Nigeria’s economic development, with specific focus on poverty reduction. Sectoral performance was disaggregated into agriculture, industry, and service sectors, measured by their growth rates. Government expenditure was introduced following its link to economic development. Data were obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin, National Bureau of Statistics and World Development Indicator. The analysis techniques include descriptive statistics, unit root test, bounds cointegration and Autoregressive Distributed Lag estimation and robustness tests. The unit root tests results showed that while agriculture and industrial sector growth rates were integrated of order zero, the other variables were integrated of order one. Evidence of cointegration was established in the model. The ARDL results showed that agriculture sector performance had a significant negative impact on poverty. The t-statistic (-2.432) of the estimated parameter is associated with probability value (0.0411) less than 0.05. However, the industrial sector growth did not significantly impact poverty reduction, given the probability level (0.89, 0.23) associated with the t-statistics (0.11, 0.15) in both long and short term respectively. Meanwhile, evidence of a significant (0.0028) negative (-3.873) effect of service sector growth on poverty exists. Similarly, government expenditure has significant (0.0004) negative (-5.205) effect on poverty. Thus, the study recommends that the government should place priorities on promoting mechanized farming, provision of postharvest facilities, lands, provide incentives for private investment in the sectors while providing health services, education, employable skills, economic and social community services with high potential for poverty reduction in Nigeria.
Keywords: Poverty reduction, Economic development, Sectoral Performance, Nigeria.