FG to develop new economic development plan Vision 2040 

The Federal Government (FG) on Thursday disclosed that there would be a new economic development plan to succeed the vision 2020 plan, after its expiration next year.

According to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Ahmed Zainab, at the Business Day Investment and Capital Markets conference in Abuja, said the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) that expires next year would also be replaced by another 4-year plan that would end in year 2024.

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The Minister, after stating that the country’s poor economic growth was due to lack of proper planning and execution for sustainable development, said the government would kick-start the process for a 20 0r 30-year economic plan.

“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.

“The ERGP that we are currently implementing expires next year, 2020, also the vision 2020 expires in 2020. So in this third quarter of 2019, we will kick start a process of a new long term development plan which could be 20 years or 30 years,” Ahmed Zainab.

The Vision 20:2020 plan of the Federal Government intended to put Nigeria among the top 20 economies of the world by next year and the ERGP, which was to bring the nation out of recession and diversify the economy, recorded little or no success.

“An important next step will be to transition our 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.

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However, Nigerians have witnessed different economic plans by various governments in the past. This casts doubt on the proposed plan by the incumbent administration.