SENATOR Udoma Udo Udoma, the Minister of Budget and National Planning says states will be integral part of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) laboratory process to enhance its implementation.

Udoma said this in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Akpandem James on Thursday in Abuja.

Udoma spoke at a workshop organised by the ministry as part of the integration process to ensure full participation of sub-regional governments in the focus labs scheduled to commence in March.

The minister said that the workshop was designed for representatives of state governments to explain the essence of the labs set up as part of government’s effort to ensure full and effective implementation of the ERGP.

He explained that the meeting was to explore how best state governments could be fully integrated into the lab process as the full participation of state governments in the labs was necessary to ensure its success.

According to him, the focus labs are basically the bringing together of all relevant players, investors, both domestic and international, subject matter specialists, and government officials at both Federal and State level.

He said that the labs would bring participants and stakeholders to mobilise high impact investments for large projects that would contribute significantly to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and job-creation.

“The focus labs, therefore, are fora for private sector investors to bring forward their entry-point project or projects they would like to invest in, and discuss with senior government officials in a closed setting.

“The labs will be starting with key areas of Agriculture and Transport, Manufacturing and Processing, and Power and Gas.

“These will reflect some of the execution priorities of the ERGP, but will continue subsequently in other areas such as entertainment, services, sports and the media.’’

The minister said the ERGP was designed to address the country’s economic challenges and to put the economy on the part of growth and sustainable development.

He said that some positive results were already manifesting, following the adoption of the ERGP, including the economy’s exit from recession in the second quarter of 2017.

“Furthermore, we have succeeded in reversing the rising rate of inflation, and since the first quarter of 2017, the rate of inflation has been declining.

“Confidence that the economy has returned; Evidence of this is the fact that we have successfully reversed the capital flight we had been experiencing, and as a result our foreign reserves have been rising.

“Indeed, our foreign reserves are presently more than 40 billion dollars, up from about 23 billion dollars as at Sept. 2016.’’

In addition, he said the country’s forex markets and rates had stabilised, and also ranking in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking had moved up 24 places from 169 in 2016 to 145 in 2017.

The minister said more still needed to be done to achieve the ambitious targets of the ERGP and to ensure that the benefits of the improved economic performance was felt by most Nigerians.

“That is why we are embarking on these focus labs to quicken the pace of the improvement of the economy and the achievement of the targets we have set for ourselves in the ERGP.”

Udoma said that weak implementation had always been the bane of past development plans which was why the present administration decided to set up the ERGP Implementation Unit in the ministry.

“The Unit was set up to facilitate the delivery of key execution priorities of the Plan. It is this Implementation Unit that is organising the focus labs,’’ he said.

Udoma recalled that at the last National Economic Council meeting on January 18, he had briefed the governors on the labs and asked for the participation of states.

“It is important and critical that we work closely with the states as most of the investments will be located in the states.

“In short, it is the state governments that will be hosting most of the investors.

“As the representatives of the states, we will be working with you to identify suitable projects that meet certain criteria such as GDP contribution, job creation, and project readiness among others,’’ he said. (NAN)

– Feb. 1, 2018 @ 18:17 GMT |