raising the competiveness of the real sector to increase the demand for Nigeria’s non-oil products and services; deepening the financial sector and sustaining its stability to enable it finance the real sector; encouraging massive investments in infrastructure and human capital and creating an enabling environment for domestic and private investment; and adopting pragmatic fiscal management and implementing appropriate monetary, trade and debt management policies to support domestic economic activities. 4.1.2 During the period under review, considerable progress was made in the areas of growth of the economy. The overall growth of the economy in 2010 was 7.85% as compared with 6.7% and 6.0% in 2009 and 2008 respectively. The major contributors to the improved GDP growth were oil and gas, telecommunications, building and construction, and wholesale and retail trade. The telecommunications sector remained the fastest-growing sector of the economy. The performance of the manufacturing sector remained disappointing in 2010 due to poor state of infrastructure especially, power supply. The non-oil sector grew at 8.5 percent in 2010 as against 8.3 percent in 2009. The domestic debt/gross domestic product ratio has also generally been on the decline since 2003 from 28.6% to 12.85% in 2010. One of the objectives of macroeconomic policies was to achieve a single digit interest and inflation rates. Although this objective was not achieved during the period under review, inflation rate hovered around 12.1%. Although, the Monetary Policy Rate was 6.25% in 2010, the interest rate was in the double digit. 50