The Nigerian government has released the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, ERGP, which contains a road map for Nigeria’s economic recovery, growth and sustainable development.

This was made known in a statement issued by James Akpandem, media aide to the Minister for Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo-Udoma.

According to Akpandem, the development of the plan went through a rigorous process including wide consultation and robust engagements with stakeholders from both the public and private sectors.

Also there were inputs by Nigeria’s international development partners such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, IMF, and African Development Bank, AfDB, as well as the National Economic Council, NEC, and the National Assembly, before the Plan was eventually approved by the Federal Executive Council.

“The core vision of the Plan is one of sustained inclusive growth,” Akpandem stated.

“The aim is to increase national productivity and achieve sustainable diversification of production, to significantly grow the economy and achieve maximum welfare for the citizens, beginning with food and energy security.

“The Plan envisages that by 2020, Nigeria would have made significant progress towards achieving structural economic change with a more diversified and inclusive economy.

“Overall, the Plan is expected to deliver on 5 key broad outcomes, namely: a stable macroeconomic environment, agricultural transformation and food security, sufficiency in energy (power and petroleum products), improved transportation infrastructure and industrialization focusing on small and medium scale enterprises.”

Furthermore, the Economic Recovery Plan “seeks to eliminate the bottlenecks that impede innovations and market based solutions, (and) recognizes the need to leverage Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) to build a knowledge-based economy.”

Akpandem stated that the plan is also consistent with the aspirations of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.

The statement further read: “The Plan has three broad strategic objectives which are expected to help achieve the vision of inclusive growth: restoring growth, investing in the people, and building a globally competitive economy.

“The ERGP focuses on achieving macroeconomic stability and economic diversification by undertaking fiscal stimulus, ensuring monetary stability and improving the external balance of trade.

“The implementation strategy therefore focuses on prioritizing the identified strategies, establishing a clear system of accountability for well-defined assignment of responsibilities, setting targets and developing detailed action plans, allocating resources to prioritized interventions, creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment, developing an effective monitoring and evaluation system to track progress, and using effective communication strategies.

“The ceremonial presentation of the Plan will take place after His Excellency, President Mohammadu Buhari, returns from vacation.”