By Chris Ndibe
Mr Clement Agba, the Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, has reported that Nigeria was committed to producing national development plans.
At a media briefing on the Medium-Term National Development Plans (MTNDPs) 2021 to 2025 and perspective plan, Nigeria Agenda 2050 in Abuja,
Agba said Nigeria’s Vision 2020 would end on December 31.
And to avoid a vacuum, he said President Muhammadu Buhari has approved and directed the ministry to prepare successor plans from which governments can derive its policies going forward.
He explained that the plan required the involvement of critical stakeholders and the ministry adopted participatory and inclusiveness of all arms of governments and the Private Sector.
He said stakeholders such as the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Opinion Leaders, Public Commentators, Religious Organisations, Traditional Leaders and various pressure groups among others were involved.
The minister said that six state governors, one from each of the six geopolitical zones, representative of major political parties were involved at the Steering Committee (SC) level for the development of the plans.
“We are in the process of engaging the grassroots through the states and the local government in the planning process, which shall take place via town hall meetings where memoranda from town development associations and traditional rulers shall be received,” he said.
Agba said that 25 Technical Working Groups (TWGs) comprising experts with diverse experiences had been engaged to identify thematic areas for the plans.
He said that they were working on Macroeconomic Framework and Growth Diagnostic to identify the policies and provide macroeconomic projections for the new plans, the performance of the outgoing plans and sector policy documents in the past periods.
The minister said that more TWGs were inaugurated to work with the Central Working Group (CWG) on agriculture, food security and rural development, manufacturing and industrialisation, transportation, housing and urban development.
He said that cross cutting issues were on employment, gender and people with special needs, education and manpower development, health and nutrition, environment, social, regional development, disaster management and digital economy, among others.
“I am happy to announce that the Macroeconomic Framework and Growth Diagnostic TWG, after three months and two weeks of tedious work, has produced a Macroeconomic Framework report.
“The report has been shared with the CWG and presented to the remaining TWGs on August 19, to guide the ongoing work on their thematic areas.
“The Macroeconomic Framework report will also be shared with the Steering Committee and Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) by the Central Working Group in due course,” Agba said.
He said that the deadline given to the TWGs to submit its work on the MTNDP, 2021 to 2025 to CWG was Sept. 30, while CWG was to turn in its report at the end of October, with the launching of the plan in December by the President.
Agba also commended the TWGs, CWG and the SC for their continuous support.
