Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade Agba said on Wednesday (November 17, 2021) that Nigeria’s new National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2025 “is a game changer.”
He said the plan had been articulately designed to address the binding constraints that previously held down the nation’s economic growth and development.
The minister explained that the reason the government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020 failed to achieve its maximum goals was because it was not owned by the private sector.
Agba said the new national plan was designed with a bottom-up approach with the emplacement of many technical working groups.
He said it would be largely led by the private sector with government acting as annenabler while Nigerians would own it.
The minister, who coordinated the preparation of the new plan, spoke as a guest on NTA’s “Good Morning Nigeria” programme.
Agba said the national development plan had prioritized rules and programmes that would enable the private sector to be the driver of the economy.
He also spoke of legislative structure to clear the way for easy operation of the private sector.
He said the design and focus were that the plan of the annual budget must flow from the new national development plan regardless of which government was in power.
Agba also said government was using technology to drive change through the new national development plan.
Agba said the binding constraints that had hindered the easy participation of private sector were now removed, including making agencies like Customs restrict itself largely to trade facilitation and not revenue generation.
He said the multiplicity of tax had been looked into in the new plan all in a bid to encourage the private sector’s smooth participation.
Agba said there was the plan around engagement, empowerment and employment of the youths that constituted about 65 per cent of the nation’s workforce.
He stated: “There is the plan vision to ensure that we unlock the potential in all sectors. The whole aim is to catalyse growth across sectors.”
Founder, ANAP foundation, chairman of Stanbic IBTC Bank and co-chair (private sector) of the steering committee for the National Development Plan, Mr Atedo Peterside, who also featured on the programme, stated that the best chance of implementing any plan was dependent on whether it had some political activism, saying politics could not be separated from economics.
Peterside said the plan was just based on realism, saying that Nigeria’s aggregate demand was about 92 per cent while 8 per cent was government.
Peterside said the government could only encourage private sector investment through the provision of right laws to engender confidence from the private sector.
Peterside said Nigeria should ensure that even if it did not succeed in conventional sectors like agriculture and industrialisation, it should make sure it succeeded in the ICT, creative/entertainment and tourism and sectors.
The fastest growing sectors of the nation’s economy in 2020 was the ICT sector, an area he said must be seriously tapped into to grow the Nigerian economy.
Professor of Capital Market at the Nasarawa State University and former Commissioner of Finance in Imo state, Uche Uwaleke, who also featured on the programme, said the plan was well articulated, saying he also agreed that “it promises to be a game changer.”
Read him: “I see this national development plan as unique. A whole chapter is dedicated to regional development, particularly interactions between regional governments.”
Uwaleke underscored the need to prioritize implementation segment of the plan.
He said “implementation of this plan will be key.”
According to him, poor implementation of previous national plans was responsible for their failure.
Uwaleke said there should be a sense of urgency in rationalizing MDAs (by way of merging them as recommended by the Steve Oronsaye report) to make them more effective in the implementation process.
The private sector is expected to bring in 85 per cent or N348 trillion funding for the plan.
Uwaleke said the funding would come if the right environment was created for the private sector to thrive.
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