Council okays agenda to move Nigeria to high-income country

The National Economic Council (NEC) presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has endorsed the Nigeria Agenda 2050 designed to move Nigeria to upper middle-income country.

This is contained in a statement issued by Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in Abuja.

The council, endorsed the agenda in an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

By this, the council said, the agenda would subsequently take Nigeria to the status of high-income country.

The agenda 2050 was presented by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to the council.

Osinbajo said that the plan captured a lot of the expectations for Nigeria in the future if effectively implemented.

The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, also spoke on the agenda.

Agba said the Federal Government had taken unprecedented steps in ensuring the operationalisation of the plan, especially with the inauguration of the Steering Committee of the National Development Plan by the vice president.

Akande listed the highlights of the Nigeria Agenda 2050 formulated against the backdrop of several subsisting development challenges in the country.

“These challenges include low, fragile, and non-inclusive economic growth, high population growth rate, pervasive insecurity, limited diversification, macroeconomic and social instability, low productivity and high import dependence.

“Nigeria Agenda 2050 is a perspective plan designed to transform the country into an Upper-Middle Income Country, with a significant improvement in per capita income.

“The plan aims to fully engage all resources, reduce poverty, achieve social and economic stability.

“It also targets developing a mechanism for achieving a sustainable environment consistent with global concerns about climate change.’’

Akande said that the plan presented the road map for accelerated, sustained and broad-based growth and provided broad frameworks for reducing unemployment, poverty, inequality, and human deprivation.

According to Akande, the agenda requires significant improvement in the country’s per capita GDP which will be powered by rapid and sustained economic growth.

“Nigeria’s long-term ambition is to improve its per capita GDP from about 2,084.05 dollars in 2020 to 6,223.23 dollars in 2030 and 33,328.02 dollars in 2050, with rapid and sustained economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

“The Nigeria Agenda 2050 projects annual average real GDP growth of 7.0 percent.

“The real growth rate of the GDP of the first medium-term NDP 2021-2025 on average will be 4.65 percent and this will increase to 8.01 percent in the second NDP; subsequently, it is expected to increase to 8.43 percent in the third.

“Consequently, the number of full time jobs created will be roughly 165 million during the agenda period to spur poverty reduction,’’ he said.

He said that the number of people in poverty would decline from the roughly 83 million in 2020 to about 47.8 million in 2025 and to 2.1 million by 2050.

Akande said that by the agenda, a significant segment of the population would be taken out of poverty.