Nigeria’s government will in the days ahead, roll out implementation strategies for its ambitious Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
The strategies are to include how the projects and set goals in the plan which spans 2017 to 2020 with a target to grow the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to a record 7 percent in the three years, will be monitored for optimum performance.
Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, who made the disclosure in an interview with BusinessDay, also said there will be quarterly reports from the different sectors of government to gauge performance.
“We are going to give quarterly reports in terms of performance, ministry by ministry, we will have milestones. One of the things that we are going to do arising from this is that we are going to roll out implementation strategies and that is still coming. That will be in much greater detail and that will be project specific and that is still coming,” Udoma said.
The ERGP, which the government has described as different from previous plans, seeks to grossly reduce inflation rate to single digit, restore growth by ensuring the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) improves significantly to 2.19 percent in 2017 and 7 per cent at the end of 2020 especially through agriculture.
The new plan also aims to boost the power situation in Nigeria with 10 GW of operational capacity by 2020 as well improve the energy mix, including through greater use of renewable energy. It also projects that the country will become a net exporter of refined petroleum products by 2020, amongst other things.
Besides rolling out the much-awaited plan which Udoma earlier said would take effect once the 2017 budget has been passed, analysts have raised concerns that the period of focused implementation may be short-lived as the country, according to tradition, will commence its election year by 2018.
According to Udoma, since elections are about performance, the government will “focus on trying to make sure that we give a consistent performance.”
Analysts have also raised concerns that there are no clearly stated timelines and clarity on how the government intends to achieve its ambitious goals of raising the bar in the manufacturing sector, as well as achieving 10GW of generated electricity in three years.
On efforts to make the manufacturing sector competitive, the minister told BusinessDay that the government has proposed to set up six export processing zones under the 2017 appropriation. The zones will have adequate infrastructure like power, water and security “because what is really affecting the manufacturing industries is infrastructure, which is why we are not competitive”. According to him, when the industries make more money, production will increase.
On the other hand, the ministry of trade and investment is also going to do a sector by sector evaluation, as was done in the case of cement, and come up with well-monitored incentives that will create a surplus.
“We are going to take it sector by sector, we will look at textiles, even agricultural produce like tomato, we will look at automobiles as well as food processing. We will do it sector by sector.
“We will sit down with the operators in those sectors and identify their problems, see what incentives they require, track their performance and we will try and make sure that incentives are based on performance not based on intentions or hope. In the past, there were a lot of incentives based on promises, people say I am going to do so and so and you give them the incentives and they don’t do it.
“So what we want to do, is that a lot of our incentives are going to track performance, which means that on a regular basis, these various sectors are going to meet and review things and we will fashion out incentives to meet the particular objectives that we have,” Udoma said.
The group managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, had at the recent Annual Oloibiri Lecture Series in Abuja, said according to the corporation’s 2017 gas plan, the
country has enough gas to generate about 4,800MW currently and also attain 6,000MW by the second quarter of 2017.
Udoma however told BusinessDay, that to achieve its plan, the government is going to ensure that every part of the chain is commercially successful by making sure that there is liquidity. He added that the government is not going leave the sector in the hands of the private sector but will remain involved.
“We are making sure that there is liquidity and that we fine-tune the system and the government will also be involved. For instance, in generating power, in the 2017 budget, we are looking at starting Mambilla project, but it is going to take us some time to do.
So the government is not abandoning power and saying it is just private sector, no, government is also going to be involved.”
Asked whether the government plans to privatise the transmission company, as it was the weakest link in the power chain, Udoma said he is not aware of any such plans but adds that, “Transmission right now is handled by the government and we are going to continue to strengthen it. That is basically what we will continue to do”.
