The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade Agba, said on Monday that the National Development Plan (NDP 2021-2025) was erected on the overall vision to make Nigeria a country that had unlocked its potential in all sectors of the economy for a sustainable, holistic and inclusive development.
The plan designed to lift 35 million people out of poverty and generate 21 million full time jobs by 2025, according to the Minister, was envisioned and targeted at lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.
The Minister, while making his remarks at the opening of the 28th Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#28), said the plan was also unique in many respects.
“The process for its preparation was not only participatory and consultative, but inclusive and benefited from the lessons learnt from the implementation of previous Plans. It has three volumes structured around seven cluster areas, namely: Volume I which is the Policy document, while Volume II contains the prioritized costed capital Programmes and Projects that will form the foundation of the Federal Government’s annual budget.
“The Volume III deals with the legislative imperatives identified as binding constraints to Plan implementation and has identified 18 laws and 10 policies that constrained Plan implementation over the years. A Technical Working Team (TWT) comprising the Office of the President on Ease of Doing Business, relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and a renowned legal firm has been set-up to review these laws and policies with a view to enriching Plan implementation.”
The minister stated that the plan was underpinned by a very strong macroeconomic framework projecting annual average real GDP growth of 5 per cent.
“The growth is envisaged to come from agriculture, trade, services, construction and manufacturing, communication sectors, etc. To achieve the growth, the plan has emphasised on improving our product space and complexity. We are optimistic as we move away from public sector led, to private sector driven plans that our long anticipated economic transformation will be achieved.”
On the summit, Prince Agba said the nearly three decades of partnership between the public and private sectors had provided a veritable platform for dialogue on reforming the Nigerian economy.
He said the summit had evolved over the years to be essential to the sustenance of the national dialogue on the economy “because it frames our deliberations within the context of the aspirations for a better quality of life for our people. It discusses our vision of equity and social justice, enviable economic and political order we are committed to creating; and forms the basis of forging consensus by promoting and sustaining cooperation between the public and private sectors.”
He noted that since the inception of the summit, the nucleus of conversations between government and the private sector had been targeted at building a resilient, virile and competitive economy.
According to him, in 2016 the current administration on the heels of the recession occasioned by the shock in the international oil market and disruptions in oil production in the Niger Delta, developed the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020 to restore growth, invest in our people, and build a globally competitive economy.
“Principally, the conscientious implementation of the plan helped in making Nigeria exit recession early,” he emphasised.
He added: “Our vision and determination to change the development trajectory of our dear country has not waned. As we keep aspiring to attain the desired objective for Nigeria’s development, we built on the gains of the ERGP and successfully delivered the National Development Plan, 2021-2025.
“We are currently in the process of finalizing the Nigeria Agenda 2050. Broadly, all past Plans had the overarching goals of economic diversification, employment generation, infrastructure development, and poverty reduction.
“In addition to these, the NDP 2021 – 2025 has a unique objective of establishing a strong foundation for a concentric economic diversification, implying that the economy had already been diversified but the focus of the Plan is to deepen the diversification effort within the sectors such that each sector could substantially increase its contribution to GDP and create more jobs.”
Prince Agba said an Inter-Ministerial Technical Committee was created to identify projects in the Volume II of the plan suitable for execution through Public Private Partnership (PPP).
“The plan has an investment size of N348.1 trillion and will be allocated to Sectors, Programmes and Projects.
” The Private Sector is expected to contribute 86 per cent of the investment, while the public sector (Federal and Sub-National Levels) will contribute the remaining 14 per cent. Improvement in revenue is expected to result in total revenue projected at 15 per cent of GDP by 2025.
“As the economy continues to recover from external and internal shocks, Nigeria’s Perspective Plan (Nigeria Agenda 2050) is designed to transform the country into an “Upper-Middle Income Country” by the year 2050. The Nigeria Agenda 2050 is formulated against the backdrop of several subsisting development challenges in the country and the need to address them within the framework of six 5-Year Medium- Term Development Plan each comprising the National Development Plan, 2021-2025 (already approved, published and being implemented), (2026-2030), (2031-2035), (2036-2040), (2041-2045), and (2046-2050).
“The programmes and projects in the plans are expected to vigorously spur development and poverty reduction through institutional structures, and ensure that the enabling environment needed for the private sector to plays its leading role is created and galvanised.
.”Thus, the Theme of this Year’s Twenty-Eight Nigerian Economic Summit (NES #28): “2023 and Beyond: Priorities for Shared Prosperity”, is timely and as I have outlined earlier, we have laid out the foundations that points to these priorities for shared prosperity in the NDP 2021-2025 and the Nigeria Agenda 2050.
He said: “What we need at this point is for the private sector to leverage on the opportunities of the various sectors as Government unlocks the economy for growth and development.”
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