By Dipo Olowookere
As President Muhammadu Buhari marks his third year in office on Tuesday, May 29, 2018, the Nigerian government has listed ‘resetting the economy’ as one of his achievements in three years.
In a post on its Twitter handle on Monday, the Nigerian government (@Aso Rock), it was said that since Mr Buhari took over from the past administration, he has also grown what people eat, made business work, plugged leakages, invested in people, secured the country, brought about reforms in the judiciary and come up with new vision for the Niger Delta.
According to the Federal Government, President Buhari reset the nation’s economy by coming up with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), which was launched in April 2017.
The economic plan charts a course for the Nigerian economy over the next four years (2017–2020) with the vision to restore economic growth, invest in Nigerians, and to build a globally competitive economy.
Government aims to achieve these by focusing on five execution priorities: stabilizing the macroeconomic environment; achieving agriculture and food security; ensuring energy efficiency (especially in power and petroleum products); improving transportation infrastructure; and driving industrialization, primarily through SMEs.
To fast-track the implementation of the ERGP, the Federal Government launched the ERGP Focus Labs, as a targeted 6-week intervention (March to April 2018) bringing together all stakeholders to identify bureaucratic bottlenecks impacting medium-scale and large-scale investment projects in Nigeria, and then generate ideas and resources to resolve them.
Government said the just-concluded Phase 1 of the ERGP Focus Labs identified private-sector projects worth about $22.5billion and with a potential for 500,000 jobs (in Agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and processing, power and gas) for unlocking by 2020.
According to the Nigerian authorities, Mr Buhari returned the economy to the path of growth, after the recession of 2016-17 with the GDP recording 1.95 percent growth in the first quarter of 2018.
It was stated that the Buhari administration’s priority sectors of Agriculture and Solid Minerals maintained consistent growth throughout the recession.
“Inflation has fallen for the fifteenth (15th) consecutive month, from 18.7 percent in January 2017 to 12.5 percent as of April 2018.
“External Reserves of $47.5 billion are the highest in 5 years, and double the size as of October 2016.
“Total exports in 2017 were 59.47% higher than for 2016. In 2017, agriculture exports grew 180.7% above the value in 2016.
“In 2017, raw material exports grew 154.2% above the value in 2016. In 2017, solid minerals exports grew 565% above the value in 2016. In 2017, exports of manufactured goods grew 26.8% above the value in 2016. The first quarter of 2018 saw the fourth consecutive quarterly increase in capital importation since Q2 2017.
“The total value of capital imported in the quarter stood at $6.32 billion, which is a year-on-year increase of 594.03%, and a 17.11% growth over the figure reported in the previous quarter. The new FX Window introduced by the CBN in April 2017 now sees an average of $1 billion in weekly turnover, and has attracted about $25 billion in inflows in its first year (and a total turnover of $47.14 billion), signalling rising investor confidence in Nigeria.
“Nigeria’s stock market ended 2017 as one of the best-performing in the world, with returns in excess of 40 percent. Five (5) million new taxpayers added to the Tax Base since 2016, as part of efforts to diversify government revenues. Tax Revenue increased to N1.17 trillion in Q1 2018, a 51% increase on the Q1 2017 figure.
“N2.7 trillion spent on infrastructure in 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, an unprecedented allocation in Nigeria’s recent history. Fourteen (14) moribund Blending Plants revitalized so far under the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI); with a total capacity of 2.3 million MT of NPK fertilizer.
“The contribution of Solid Minerals’ to the Federation Account rose five-fold from N700 million in 2015 to N3.5 billion in 2017,” the Nigerian authorities said.
Adedapo Adesanya