By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, has said Nigeria would attain 7 per cent growth by 2020 with enhanced enhanced implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
He made this known at a press briefing organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in Lagos, yesterday, assuring that the implementation of the ERGP was critical to achieving the ambitious goals of government to diversify the economy and attain a growth rate of 7 per cent by 2020.
“Getting out of recession is only the first step as we have much more ambitious goal and that is to attain 3.5 per cent in 2018, 4.5 per cent growth rate in 2019 and 7 per cent in 2020,” he said.
According to Udoma, “with the launch of the ERGP, the theme of this year’s NESG summit, ‘Opportunities, Productivity and Employment: Actualising the ERGP’ is linked to the implementation plan and will focus on adopting a solutions-based approach in addressing the issues that will expand opportunities, tackle unemployment and improve productivity.”
This, he said, was in line with the aspiration of the ERGP, which aims at restoring and sustaining growth, investing in the people and building a globally competitive economy.
He attributed the government’s funds on critical infrastructure as part of the reason behind the nation’s exit from recession, noting that the government will need to spend between 3 and 5 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the amount spent is not enough.
“We have moved the spending towards critical infrastructure and that explains the speed with which we got out of recession. However, the amount we are spending on critical infrastructure is not enough at all. Our survey carried showed that we need to spend between 3 and 5 per cent of GDP on infrastructure if we really want to make an impact, and government funding cannot provide more than 0.5 per cent at the moment.
“So there is a big gap and that gap has to be closed by the private sector and we are looking at encouraging PPPs, we are looking at ways we can get the private sector involved in funding critical infrastructure. That is what we are concentrating and working on,” Udoma explained.
The NESG summit, which is in its 23rd edition is an annual Nigerian Economic Summit in partnership with the Federal Government of Nigeria through the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, is set to hold between October 10 and 12, 2017 at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.