Also Friday, Standard and Poor's, one of the world's
renowned ratings agencies affirmed Nigeria's credit rating
of BB- with stable outlook.

The rating is coming amid the debate over the health of
the economy, especially with the claims that the Federal
Government could not meet its obligations.

The rating, which is first to be released among the three
renowned ratings agencies - S & P, Fitch and Moody's - this year, confirms last year's ratings of the economy.

Anouncing the cheery news, Coordinating Minister of the
Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,said even though S & P acknowledged the challenges facing the country, the ratings agency, with its latest assessment, confirmed that the economy was robust.

An elated Okonjo-Iweala said: "We now have the outcome
of the 2013 ratings, which is a very positive one. The
ratings confirm our current ratings, which is BB- stable
outlook. So, they have confirmed that the ratings we had
last year stands, which means that very positive things are going on in this economy.

"They have also acknowledged the challenges we have. Of course, they look at those things. In summary, in spite of those challenges, they think the Nigerian economy is
robust, the macroeconomic indicators are strong, ongoing
monetary policy, which the CBN governor talked about and the fiscal stance are strong enough for us to maintain a very good rating we had before."

The finance minister said the development was news
worthy given the current debate on the strength of the
economy. She pointed out that the latest development had cleared the air about the state of the economy.

According to her, "this is yet one more external validation
and confirmation that this economy, in spite of the
challenges, which we all know and which we have not
shied away from putting on the table. And that is the
overall assessment."

Giving the specifics of the ratings by S & P, Okonjo-Iweala
stated: "Overall, they are looking at strong GDP growth in
2013 to 2016, primarily due to non-oil growth.

They are assessing our external and fiscal debt stock
burden. The debt stock, in their opinion, remains relatively low and foreign exchange reserves remain strong.

"They are also viewing positively the fact that AMCON is
redeeming some of its debts, about N1.7 trillion in cash
and taking that off the books. And they are of course
looking at some of the development in the non-oil sector
that are positive, what we are doing in power. The fact that our growth is not really from the oil sector but from non-oil,agriculture, retail, telecoms, all these areas, and the reforms are all the things they see as positive."

In addition, she pointed out that S & P expressed the need for a strong fiscal stance and not to run down the nation's excess crude too rapidly.

"They are not saying that we don't have challenges of
unemployment, infrastructure or trying to make sure that
the benefits of growth go down more to those at the
bottom," she emphasised.

On what the rating means to ordinary Nigerians, the
finance minister, flanked by the CBN Governor, Mallam
Lamido Sanusi, and Director General of the Debt
Management Office, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, noted: In
every country, both ordinary people and investors need to have some ways of knowing whether their economy is
being managed the right way and whether it would
provide the kind of environment that the private sector can invest in. For the ordinary Nigerian, you know it is the
private sector that creates jobs.

"In every country, it is not really the government that
creates the jobs, it is the private sector. If the private
sector does not have an objective means of knowing
whether the economy is going in the right direction, they
will not know whether to invest in that country or not.

"So, for the ordinary Nigerian, this means this is sending a very strong signal to both our domestic private sector as well as the foreign one that this economy is being run in the right direction. They are not saying that the economy is perfect, there are many challenges. But they are saying it is being run in the right direction and that if we strengthen and improve our policies, we could even do better."

www.thisdaylive.com/articles/fg-states-share-n1-1trn-as-s-ps-affirms-nigeria-bb-ratings/161389/

And sm IGNORAMUSES keep saying that the Economy is in trouble; that it is broke...