ERGP: Federal Govt. calls for focus on developmental measures

The Federal Government has urged planners, policy experts and managers to focus on development measures capable of sustaining and accelerating the country’s economic recovery and growth efforts.

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma made the call in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Akpandem James on Thursday in Abuja.

Udoma spoke in Minna at the 16th Meeting of the National Council on Development Planning (NCDP).

The three-day meeting focused on strategies to further drive the successes achieved so far in the implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

Udoma said the major thrust of the meeting was to work out effective ways of using the ERGP as a roadmap to achieve inclusive growth and build a resilient and competitive economy.

The minister said he was optimistic that the result of such deliberations would ensure achievement of the goal the Buhari administration set for building a sustainable, inclusive and diversified economy.

He, however, urged participants at the conference to always remember that the administration’s goal was to make the country the economic powerhouse of Africa.

Udoma emphasised that economic transformation of Nigeria had always been an important element of Buhari’s agenda for the country, a commitment which led to the packaging of the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP).

He said that the commitment also led to formulation of the ERGP to address the challenging economic situation, adding that the measures introduced under the SIP and the ERGP had been impactful.

“We have more work to do to sustain and accelerate the momentum with an estimated population growth of almost three per cent, a growth rate of a little over one per cent can hardly be felt.

“We need to work hard to ensure that we achieve our ERGP growth target of 3.5 per cent for 2018 and seven per cent by the year 2020.

“If we keep on working hard and sustaining the tempo, there is no reason why we cannot achieve a growth rate of up to 10 per cent in succeeding years.

“Nigeria has the people, we have the energy and we have the resources to achieve this.

“Let us not relent until we are growing at a rate that can turn us into the economic powerhouse of Africa, and even the World,’’ the minister said.

He also spoke on the importance of the Malaysian style lab that would soon commence in Nigeria.

Udoma said that the ministry had set up a special implementation unit to ensure effective delivery of the ERGP.

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“The implementation unit will soon be running sector-focused style labs in agriculture and transportation, power and gas, and manufacturing and processing.

“To help us in running these labs, we have retained `PEMANDU’, which was the Malaysian agency that spearheaded the transformation of the Malaysian economy using these labs.

“PEMANDU will act as consultants to support the members of our implementation unit,’’ he said.

According to him, each lab will assemble relevant stakeholders into unbroken weeks of intensive working sessions to brainstorm on practical steps to overcome identified challenges in the selected sector.

Udoma said that the ministry would be reaching out to all the states to participate in these labs.

“The central objective of the labs will be to harness private capital to finance projects across the country.

“At the end of each lab, the participants would have developed very detailed implementation plans with identified funding support,’’ he said.

The minister expressed appreciation to the Governor of Niger State, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, and the people of the state for accepting to host the meeting.

He commended the governor for his passionate zeal in transforming the state through the continued search for solutions to the challenges that affect the people.

The theme of the meeting was; “The Economic Recovery and Growth Plan: Roadmap to Inclusive Growth, Resilient and Competitive Economy.”