Representatives of state governments on Wednesday met in Abuja at a workshop organised by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning as part of the integration process by the Federal Government to ensure full participation of sub-regional governments in the Focus Labs.
The programme is scheduled to commence next month.
At the meeting, the minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, explained 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 the full and effective implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
He explained that the meeting was to explore how best state governments could be fully integrated into the lab process because the full participation of state governments in the labs is necessary to ensure its success.
The minister reminded them that the ERGP was fashioned out to address the challenged economy which the Muhammadu Buhari inherited as he pointed out 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 in 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 currently over US$40 billion, up from about US$23 billion as at September 2016. In addition, our forex markets and rates have stabilised, and our ranking in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking has moved up 24 places from 169 in 2016 to 145 in 2017,” he indicated.
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The minister said while the positive results were encouraging, he said more still needed to be done to achieve the ambitious targets of the ERGP and ensure that the benefits of the improved economic performance was felt by most Nigerians.
“And 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,” he said.
He noted 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 to facilitate the delivery of key execution priorities of the plan.
He said it was the Implementation Unit that was organising the focus labs.
The focus labs are basically the bringing together of all relevant players: investors, both domestic and international, subject matter specialists, government officials at both federal and state level, and other participants and stakeholders, to mobilise high impact investments for large projects that would contribute significantly to Gross Domestic Product 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 minister explained that they were aimed at driving big, fast results in the selected area.
The labs will be starting with three key areas: Agriculture and Transport, Manufacturing and Processing, and Power and Gas, reflecting some of the execution priorities of the ERGP; but will continue subsequently in other areas such as entertainment, services, sports and the media.
He recalled that at the last National Economic Council meeting on Thursday January 18, 2018, he had briefed the governors on the labs and asked for the participation of states.
The Wednesday meeting was a follow-up engagement with representatives of the states on the process.
