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With a medium-term economic recovery plan, the Federal Government is targeting an ambitious 7 percent economic growth between 2017 and 2020.
Udoma Udo Udoma, budget and planning minister, told Guillaume Chabert, assistant secretary for Multilateral Affairs of the Trade and Policy Department at the French Treasury that the Nigerian government was working on a National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (NERGP), tailor-made, to move the country’s economy out of recession and set it on a growth path.
“Our plan is that we should be able within that plan period (2017 – 2020) to achieve not less than 7 percent growth,” Udoma told Chabert, who was accompanied by the French ambassador to Nigeria, Denys Gauer, to the minister’s Abuja office on Thursday.
Udoma said achieving such growth would involves increased spending through cheap borrowings solely dedicated to fund infrastructure projects due to the enormous stimulative effect of such investments and being the surest way of setting the country on the part of growth and sustainable development.
“… to get out of economic recession, we will need to harness resources by plugging revenue leakages and by looking at new revenue sources in order to generate the resources required to spend our way out of recession, particularly focused on infrastructure,” the minister said.
He explained that while government is exploring other means of generating revenue internally, government will need to borrow, part of which has to be sourced internationally from concessionary funding sources like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
But he said, that Nigeria must also work to rev up the oil revenues. ”We know we need to look at upgrading our oil revenue in order to generate the resources to use to spend our way out of dependence on oil; which means we have to focus our attention on reducing the disruptions in the Niger Delta, so that we can get our production back to a minimum of 2.2 million barrels per day. That is the fastest way to generate resources.”
He acknowledged that Government cannot do it all alone, which explains why, according to him, Buhari government is emphasizing creating an enabling environment for effective private sector participation in growing the economy.
Apart from efforts made in the area of ease of doing business, the Minister said government is going into partnership with the private sector in critical areas of infrastructure provision and concessioning.
“Our intention is to make the private sector to lead the way in social housing. We will kick-start the process and intend to make some provision for it in the 2017 Budget. Then we are also looking at manufacturing.
“One of the ways is by developing export processing zones where we will have all the required infrastructure including power, rail and security, to encourage manufacturers to relocate to Nigeria,” his media aide, Akpandem James quoted him to have said in a statement.
“We want to make sure that the growth will be an inclusive one. In the past, we used to have growth that was not inclusive. We were growing but poverty was increasing. We want to make sure that the growth is inclusive. One of the ways is to give preference to labour intensive activities to create jobs, which is the fastest way to reduce poverty. In addition to that, we will continue with our social intervention projects”, he informed.
The minister expressed government’s appreciation for the support by the French Government, particularly in terms of the various bilateral as well as multilateral support, directly and through the European Union respectively. “This is a relationship that we cherish and will like to continue to develop and enrich”, he added.
France is one of the international Development Partners exploring areas of support to help Nigeria grow a sustainable economy,
The Assistant Secretary, Chabert, while appreciating the economic challenges the country is currently facing said the French government would be willing to support Nigeria surmount the challenges as he said “it is in our interest that Nigeria succeeds”.
He promised to make some input into the country’s economic plan once the framework is made available.
