Osinbajo: “Nigeria has high poverty index because of……”

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has attributed the nation’s high poverty population to the neglect of the country’s informal sector.

The informal sector of the economy implies those workers who are self employed, or who work for those who are self employed, as their earnings do not reflect on payrolls, and thus are not taxed.

The Vice President made this known while delivering a keynote address at the Special Parliamentary Session to mark the third anniversary of the 8th Assembly of the Lagos State House of Assembly in Lagos yesterday.

According to him, a larger proportion of the economy, which is dominated by those in the informal sector consisting of petty traders, have income which is often overlooked thereby making the country’s poverty index high.

“One of the reasons why our poverty figures are high is because of our large informal sector consisting of the petty traders whose income does not fit into the extreme poverty bracket but they are counted in a number because there is no way of tracking them up,” the Vice President noted.

Osinabajo said the Federal Government was making plans to expand its micro credit programme to give smaller credit to those in the group.

“We bring them into the formal sector where they have access to government and private credit and we thereby lift more people permanently out of poverty,” he said.