The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN,  has said the nation has seen growth in the manufacturing and agriculture sector following its sustained interventions geared at building the non oil sector.

Godwin Emefiele,  Governor of the bank while speaking at a one day  Seminar  for Financial Correspondents and Business Editors in Lagos on Saturday, said the apex bank has taken major leaps to diversify the economy away from largely oil-based economy through its numerous interventions.

Speaking on the theme “Policy Options for Economic Diversification: Thinking Outside the Crude Oil-Box”,  Emefiele said, “We have supported non-oil sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, health care, education, power and aviation and other allied economic value chains.

The Governor recalled the flagship Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) that heralded recent rice revolution in Nigeria has changed the long-standing dependence on imported rice as the country is not only depending on domestic production, and that the country has become a rice exporting country.

He noted that the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS) is a major special purpose vehicle to support commercial farmers in the country in different value chains including oil palm, cotton, cocoa, among others.

He further said the Bank has continued its support to the manufacturing sector and MSMEs which has also yielded great results as the implementation of 44 items not valid for FX for imports has revealed.

” Let me take this medium to inform you once again that our intervention in the health sector, for example has begun to reduce the health care tourism being sought outside the country which is helping to conserve our foreign exchange and improve our well-being.”

Continuing he said Furthermore, the new 100 for 100 Policy on Production and Productivity (PPP), which is targeted at harnessing our local raw materials to increase domestic production, as well as exports through our deliberate credit and other supports, will soon begin to yield quality results.

” Moreso, the RT200 FX initiative designed to take advantage of our large domestic production to other regional markets is targeted to increase foreign exchange inflows to the economy and support exchange rate stability. In addition, the on-going work at the Dangote Refinery, when fully completed, will stop fuel importation just as we witnessed in cement, sugar and fertilizer market