FG Targets 21 Million Jobs In Five Years Through New National Development Plan

The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, on Thursday, said that the new National Development Plan will in the next five years generate 21 million full-time jobs and lift 35 million Nigerians out of poverty.

Agba said this in a keynote address at the African Statistics Day in Nigeria hosted by the National Bureau of Statistics, one of the agencies, departments and parastatals under his ministry,

The Federal Government’s ambitious targets of Nigeria’s New National Development Plan was approved by the Federal Executive Council last Wednesday.

The minister stated that the NDP was planned to, in addition, achieve a broad-based economic growth of about five per cent on the average.

He pointed out that it was expected that national government net revenue at all levels would increase to 15 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2025.

Agba said that the NDP (2021-2025) was to guide government’s policies, programmes and projects as well as private sector operations from now to 2025.

He added that these would be inspired by the perspective plan-Nigeria Agenda 2050, which, according to him, encapsulated the long-term vision for Nigeria.

He said: “The Plan seeks to achieve these laudable goals in the medium term by expanding economic growth, growing an inclusive economy, leveraging its young workforce and enhancing execution capacity at the national and sub-national levels.”

He added: “The NDP 2021 – 2025 envisions Nigeria being a leading industrializing and reforming nation in Africa, that will focus on building its institutional capacity and capability as well as bolstering a private sector-led growth to help address the critical issues of job and wealth creation and poverty reduction.

“Nigeria has an enabling investment climate and business environment, underpinned by a motivated, capacitated, well-resourced, world-class civil service that drives open, transparent, high-performance governance at all levels.

“The country is now moving decisively towards the reforms required to unlock local content development, sub-national economic diversification, competitiveness and growth, making moderate, incremental progress in poverty reduction and job creation in the medium-term.”