It is customary in Nigeria that anytime there is a big knock on the economy, the government of the day come up with some fashionable plan to rescue the economy. It did not start with the present APC led Federal Government with Muhammadu Buhari at the helm, and given the political culture prevalent in the country, it will not stop with them.
As someone said earlier today, if the plans are faithfully implemented, Nigeria will be better than Dubai in 12 months. In following with the culture of those that came before them, this government have given birth to two “incredible plans” on the economy, on paper at least.
This is the second economic crisis being faced by the Buhari led Federal Government, and as without disappointing the watching public, they have come up with a new plan christened “Bouncing Back: Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan”.
The country entered an economic recession that was caused by many factors in the second quarter of 2016. The current administration rightly recognized that the economy would remain on a path of steady and steep decline if nothing was done to change the negative trajectory.
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To change that trajectory, they came up with the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), a Medium Term Plan for 2017 -2020, developed for the purpose of restoring economic growth.
Amongst the main priorities for ERGP are; stabilizing the macroeconomic environment with low inflation, stable exchange rates and sustainable fiscal and external balances, ensuring energy sufficiency (power and petroleum products) by delivering at least 10 GW of operational capacity by 2020 and to improve the energy mix through greater use of renewable energy, driving industrialization focusing on Small and Medium Scale Enterprises. One major strategy is to accelerate implementation of the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) through Special Economic Zones (SEZs), focusing on priority sectors to generate jobs, promote exports, boost growth and upgrade skills to create 1.5 million jobs by 2020.
Well, we are in 2020, and I cannot say that any of the 5 beautiful priorities for economic recovery and growth was achieved, or look to be on course to being achieved. Inflation is still very high, there is no adequate electricity, crude oil still accounts for most of the country’s export, unemployment is something else.
Then COVID-19 has struck and oil prices subsequently collapsed, exposing the colossal failure to diversify the economy, as the ERGP stipulated.
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Following the health and economic emergencies caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari established the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC) on March 30, 2020.
The primary assignment of the Committee headed by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo is to develop a clear economic sustainability plan in response to challenges posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Committee presented the report to the President on 11 June 2020. Very laudable plans were contained in the report, again we fear it will be on paper only.
For the sake of knowledge and discussion, we will be reviewing the plans contained in the report one at a time.
Will this economic sustainability plan that incorporated other plans like ERGP, Report of the Economic Crisis Committee, The Finance Act 2019, and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) proposals be implemented?
We do not think so, it will likely suffer the fate of other plans that came before it.
Written by;
Nnamdi M.
