Nigeria sets another 20-year economic development strategy as Vision 2020 expires

The Federal Government of Nigeria has said that it has implemented plans to get a 20-year economic development strategy running, which will replace the Vision 2020 elapsing next year.

This was disclosed by the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, while speaking at the BusinessDay Investment and Capital Markets conference held in Abuja on Thursday.

She said there will also be a five-year plan to succeed the Economic and Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) which will also expire in 2020.

“Having recognized that Nigeria’s past failure to plan and execute sustainable diversified and inclusive growth and development which led to a recession, precipitated by external shocks like the crude oil price crash, the government in its plan is looking at developing a new long-term plan,” she said.

“The ERGP that we are currently implementing expires next year, 2020, also the vision 2020 expires in 2020.

“So, in this [fourth] quarter of 2019, we will kick start a process of a new long term development plan which could be 20 years or 30 years.

The minister noted the next step would be to transition the country’s 2017-2020 economic recovery and growth plan to a successive long-term vision 2040 plan.

“To this end, I am currently working with the minister of state, budget and national planning to prepare a medium-term economic growth acceleration plan for 2021-2024 as a successor to the ERGP,” she said.

Mrs Ahmed further added that the government would still continue to execute the ERGP in order to ensure that there is a developed investment structure to drive the non-oil revenue sector to move away from the oil economy.

She also said the process of raising funding using naira-denominated bonds called Jollof bonds abroad to fund infrastructure projects will begin in 2020.

“To this end, during the recently concluded 2019 annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, we met with UK authorities to advance discussions regarding their commitment to support our infrastructure financing through the possible issuance of Jollof bonds,” she explained.

“Already, a working group is being set up to work on Naira denominated, internationally traded bonds. The Central Bank of Nigeria is leading this effort. We will explore all the options on this at the next UK Investment Summit in January 2020,” she said.