Guardian

THE recently held Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja emerged with the obvious verdict that the nation may still be far from anywhere close to the year 2020 target, going by the calculation of independent economic experts.

“BY 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harnesses the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens”.

The above quotation captures the vision statement of Nigeria’s Vision 20:2020 as proposed by the late President Musa Yar’adua, which the present administration of President Goodluck Jonathan is also pursuing.

However, this mission statement may be difficult to realize due to the bumps and hiccups that economic experts have observed in its implementation at a recent summit in Abuja to review the entire project so far.

In collaboration with its partners, the Nigerian government through the National Planning Commission (NPC) in December 2010, launched the Nigeria Vision 20:2020, a national effort aimed at growing and developing Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and bringing it to the league of the world’s 20 leading economies by year 2020.

According to the National Planning Commission, the Nigeria Vision 20:2020 (NV20: 2020) is Nigeria’s long term development goal designed to propel the country to the league of the top 20 economies of the world by 2020. Attainment of the Vision is expected to enable the country achieve a high standard of living for its citizens.

The Vision is be pursued through a series of three to four year plan which will further articulate the strategies, policies, projects and programmes among other things.

Its two broad objectives are to make efficient use of human and natural resources to achieve rapid economic growth and translate the economic growth into equitable social development for all citizens.

The development aspirations cut across four dimensions:

• Social - building a peaceful, equitable, harmonious and just society;

• Economic - developing a globally competitive economy;

• Institutional - having a stable and functional democracy; and

• Environmental – achieving a sustainable management of the nation’s natural resources.

The Vision notes that Nigeria has had a relatively long experience in development planning beginning with the Colonial Development Plan (1958-1968). Fixed medium-term development plans and National Rolling Plans were also developed and implemented with mixed results.

It admits failure in Nigeria’s implementation of these plans and promises to avoid the pitfalls of the past.

But the last Nigeria Economic summit held in Abuja punctured holes in Nigeria’s ability to attain the year 2020 target, stressing rather that Nigeria may be able to attain the goal in 2035 if it executes some of its recommendations.    Nigeria’s economic competitiveness at the global stage was considered as a key indicator to realizing its vision 20:2020.

The 2012-2013 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) ranks Nigeria 115th out of 144 countries in terms of competitiveness. The alarm has also been raised that other countries of the world, which Nigeria hopes to overtake, are not sitting down folding their arms.

Director General of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) Frank Nweke Jr in a frank presentation of an assessment of Nigeria’s actual economic performance, urged Nigeria to double efforts in its economic transformation agenda.

Using a one-year period (June 2011 –June 2012) as opposed to targets, putting into perspective the policy documents and other reports, the study by the Nigeria Economic Summit said recent improvement still puts Nigeria at the bottom 20 per cent rank of countries surveyed.

“Nigeria will be the 27th largest economy in the world by the year 2020 with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 864 billion US Dollars.  This falls short of what its needs to fall within the league of 20th target by 316 billon US Dollars.  Nigeria could be still be the twentieth largest economy by 2035,” the former Minister of Information during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration said.

Assessing Nigeria’s actual economic performance against targets between June 2011 and June 2012, Nweke went on: “Our analysis of Nigeria’s overall economic performance in the last 12 months to June 2012 shows that the economy scored 4.18 points on a 10-point scale. We can interpret this to mean that a distance of 41.8 per cent has been covered in terms of attaining all of the domestic policy targets and global developmental benchmarks observed within the review period. And this leaves a distance of 58.2 per cent yet to be covered. Overall, this present score of 4.18 is an improvement from the 3.93 scored in the same period a year ago.

“In summary, we can note that: Seven domains scored above the aggregate. These included corporate governance, the real sector and the macroeconomic environment among others. On the other hand, five domains scored below the aggregate. These included infrastructure and political governance, among others. In addition, two interesting findings were also revealed: First was that the domain of Corporate Governance scored the highest points of 5.64. This is a result of significant improvements in corporate ethics and disclosures as well as auditing and reporting standards especially in the financial services industry, as an aftermath of the local banking crisis.”

He went on:  “The second finding, in contrast, was that the domain of political governance scored the lowest points of 3.12. This is partly as a result of the frequent impasses between the legislature and executive over budgetary matters, which causes delays in budget passage. Studies have shown that the budgetary process in Nigeria experiences a four month delay from the time of the President’s Budget Speech through the legislative process to the time of the final presidential assent. The low score is also a result of the unending probes into untraceable public funds which have created a high level of public distrust for politicians.”

He stressed that the insecurity in the nation had partly affected the size and direction of investment flows into Nigeria, which has fallen by 19.14% to US$10.4 billion from US$12.8 billion a year ago. The Group reckoned that Saudi Arabia would be the 20th largest economy in the world by 2020, with a GDP of US$1.2 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP), while Nigeria on the other hand would be the 27th largest economy in the world by 2020, with a GDP of US$864 billion in PPP; falling short of being the 20th largest economy by a GDP of US$316 billion.

Despite the attainment of some positive economic realities within the period in review, Nweke, however, said: “The sharp rise in the Monetary Policy Rate from 8.00% to 12.00% due to the CBN’s hiking of the MPR three times in the last 12 months to June 2012. The flat growth in the manufacturing sector from 7.56% to 7.55%, The decline in the real GDP growth from 7.78% to 7.03% which meant that the economy decelerated for the 7th quarter in a row since the first quarter of 2011” and the depressing growth in the oil sector due to pipeline vandalism, leaks as well as stalled investment occasioned by the non passage of the petroleum industry bill. These according to the former Minister of Information did not augur well with the target growth.

Overall, despite some progress made within the macroeconomic environment, information communication technology and science among others, the country’s economic standing on the global scene in 2020 does not put her among the 20 most economically developed countries in the world as contained in the NV20: 2020 document.

The NESG scorecard states that until 2035, considering the current growth rate, Nigeria cannot realize its vision to be the 20th largest economy in the world.  The unusually huge cost of governance in the country was considered to be one of the greatest obstacles to achieving the Vision.

The Group also called for a review of the budget focus so that greater emphasis would be on long-term development capital as opposed to fixed assets. The NESG wants government to a 50:50 relationship between capital and recurrent expenditure, reduction in the cost of governance and the need to “re-evaluate our current model of governance.”

Diversification from oil was also re-emphasized by several stakeholders at the summit.

Until recently, agriculture has remained the most untapped sector that has continued to be the highest employer of labour in the country.

To unlock the potentials of Nigeria becoming an agricultural gain in the world, the Minister of Agriculture Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, said that his ministry was implementing a time-bound aggressive plan to unlock Nigeria’s potentials to become an agricultural power horse.

Adesina said prospective growth in this sector lies “with the projected population increase from 165 million people to 470 million by 2050, thence a large internal market, wide arable land covering 84 million hectares, 279 billion cubic meters of surface water, untapped irrigation potentials with three of the eight major rivers systems in Africa passing through Nigeria and 110 million youth in the work force by the year 2020. All these, he said, are encapsulated in the Agricultural transformation plan.

He said the agricultural sector is set to add 20 million metric tonnes to domestic food production, create 3.5 million jobs and make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production all by 2015. These are besides efforts to ensure over N300 billion (US$2 billion) of additional income for Nigerian farmers and reduce the level of wheat importation, by substituting 20 per cent of bread wheat flour with high quality cassava flour.

Housing and the power sector were also identified as another critical consideration in the drive to economic growth.

Experts agree that the overall interest of achieving Nigeria’s Vision 2020: 20 is possible, if the primary indicator of economic performance, that is, the number of jobs created annually is pursued, coupled with accelerated pace of reforms and growth or else, as projected by the NESG, it has to be remodeled as vision 27:2020 or vision 20: 2035.

Public affairs commentator and economic analyst, Eze Onyekpere in a published article on achieving the vision 20:2020 emphasized that all may not be well with the Vision 2020: 20.

He said: “We may decide to continue to pretend that all is well and call some technocrats into air-conditioned rooms to repeat the flowery grammar of the past hoping that Vision 20: 2020 will achieve itself. But this will lead us nowhere and the movement in a barber’s chair will continue.”

The 18th Nigeria Economic Summit (NES) may have come and gone, but the recommendations of the summit are constant reminders of an urgent need for a more dedicated performance drive.