Updated: FG still fine-tuning Economic Recovery Plan

…As FEC approves N 126 billion for 12 roads

Nigeria’s Economic Recovery Growth Plan, expected to bring the country out of recession is still being fine-tuned ahead of a proposed launch later in February.

The plan which is being put together in a document received input from the Federal Executive Council during a seven hours meeting chaired by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

This is even as FEC approved the award of contracts worth N126 billion for 12 roads across the country.

Briefing journalists after the meeting Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma said Council extensively discussed the plan adding that consultations are still ongoing with different groups.

“We had extensive discussion on Economic Recovery Growth Plan. The growth plan is still being fine-tuned. But a lot of inputs were made by Council Members and it is virtually ready for the President to launch. However, we are doing some fine tuning and during this period we also do some final consultation before the president launches the plan” Udoma said.

The plan is expected to drive the economic recovery of Africa’s once largest economy, as well as crash inflation rate which Statistics officials say stood at 18.72% as at January 2017.

According to the minister, the council spent time deliberation on the issue of implementation. “That’s the key and one of the means of ensuring implementation is to have a delivery unit which will be in the presidency”.

Udoma said the plan also seeks to stabilise the exchange rate in the country as well as ensure diversified inclusive and sustained growth. The plan also seeks to address poor competitiveness, improve business environment and attract investment and infrastructure , especially power, roads, rails and ports.

Issues like jobs and social inclusion are also key focused areas of the plan, with immediate execution priorities including agriculture and food security; energy-particularly power and petroleum product sufficiency; industrialization-focusing on small and medium size enterprising; transportation which is very, very important as an infrastructure requirement to get the economy really moving and stabilisation of the micro-economy environment.

While the document is still being fine tuned, Udoma said reviews are being incorporated and at a date to be announced soon, the president will launch the plan. “Let me add that there will be  additional consultations that we agreed in cabinet that we will be making and one of the people we will be consulting will be labour before the plan is finalized”.

He however, added that the elements in the plan were already being implemented as the 2017 budget was guided by it.

“As you know, the 2017 budget is under the guidance of the plan. It is just we want a complete document so that any stakeholder dealing with Nigeria internally and externally, there will one document that you can see anything that you want find out about what government thinking
is on the economy and every aspect of it. It is all in a document. We started with this implementation in the 2016 budget. When the plan is launched, you will see that everything that was done in that 2016 budget will be in that plan”.

Council during its meeting also gave approval to a memo by the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, for the award of contracts for the rehabilitation and construction of 12 roads in the country spread across seven states of the federation.

According to Fashola, FEC considered what the approval for the contracts will do for the economy in relation to restoring confidence in the construction industry as well as the impact it will have on the
citizens, reducing their travel time.

“Contractors who have been owed for two, three years before Mr. President was elected are back in various states, they recalled back their workers and as they are purchasing gravel, cement, the economy is on its way back to a mend and this situates what the minister of budget and planning has said. Every place in all of those states once we mobilise the contractors the money is kept in those states.

Most of the workers who drive the trucks, who fix the roads that you see are
indigenes of those states and so they aggregate to the total output from each of those states to the national productivity and national recovery, what you then will see is improve improved journey time which was what we promised you as we cover more grounds wherever we have worked we have seen that you are travelling more efficiently, you are burning less fuel, you are reaching your destination quicker and as we complete those roads we can only have a more efficient economy ”
he said.