Mr. Wale Edun, the Nigeria’s minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, said the Federal Government of Nigeria is making steady progress in establishing critical Frameworks, Policies and markets enabler that would promote the country towards climate resilient economy.
It’s also making frantic effort at coordinating the economy and making critical investment for attracting retaining capital flows.
Mr. Wale Edun, revealed this at the Lagos Business School Breakfast, where shared his views on the topic “Club Reconstructing the Economy for growth, investment and climate resilience development” and setting the pace for the underway initiatives of the federal government of Nigeria.
When highlighting the steps taken towards building a climate resilient economy, he noted that before now there were several initiatives which includes but not limited to: the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 2021 Climate Change Act of 2021, and Energy transition Plan August 2022 respectively.
However, the current demonstration also inaugurated the Carbon Markets Committee in February 2024, removal of Fuel Subsidy 2024, while setting the pace for SE4all Vision 30-30-30 , 20% unconditional & 47% conditional emissions reduction, $17.7B/annum to meet conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC)
On the economy coordination, he said it’s at the core of growth aspirations, necessitating the President to institute an Economic Coordination framework that is adaptive and is reflective of the participation of all key stakeholders, including the private sector
Others include: the Presidential Economic Coordination Council, Economic Management Team Emergency EMT, Taskforce Private Sector Stakeholders and Specialists.
Accordingly, the president, also recently announced the formation of a Presidential Economic Coordination Council (‘PECC’), comprising the President, Vice President, Senate President, Honourable Ministers, Governors, and members of the Private Sector.
According to him, while the Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC) would be supported by the Economic Management Team (‘EM’T), which is essentially responsible coordinating the activities of the core sectors of the economy through the respective ministries and agencies of government.
The Emergency EMT Taskforce (‘EET’) that has been designated with the mandate to immediately develop a suite of high impact interventions that would effectively ameliorate some of the challenges faced by a broad cross-section of Nigerians and corporate organizations.
Meanwhile, the Emergency Management Team (EET) will within 2 weeks propose solutions for the PECC’s consideration with the expectation that these high-impact programmes would be delivered within a period of 6 months.
During this period the EMT will pause it periodic meetings.
However, participation in the EET includes members of the private sector to ensure that proposed solutions are reflective of a robust cross-section of stakeholders
He also noted that increase in Productivity, food production & Investments, engaging with manufacturers to develop programmes and policies that would cushion the impact of current challenges and stimulate mass scale productive activity across multiple sectors, deploying fiscal tools to significantly increase the supply of grain and other inputs, creating jobs and increasing the exports of farm produce remain utmost priority.
Others are; food inflation is the primary driver of inflationary pressure on our economy. (~37.9% as of February 20240), increasingly stable and predictable exchange rates, risk reflective yields and targeted policies would increase the ability to attract local and foreign capital; in agriculture, substantial reduction in post-harvest losses, up-scaling and outstanding of agricultural value chain projects, while in the Infrastructural sector, the Renewed Hope Infrastructure.
In the Oil and Gas sector, development Fund and the power sector will pursue up to 6GW of generated and delivered electricity in H2, 2024 and the leverage recent Presidential Directives to facilitate investments into the sector and the large scale housing development programme will be implemented in the Hosing Sector.
Edun also noted that the government must work on how: to increase oil production, growth in the Agricultural sector and make an organized effort towards boosting trading activities to sustain a positive current account.
According to him, increase oil production to 2mbpd (inc. condensate) agriculture sector growth to hit >3% versus 2.1% in 2023, frantic effort must also be made to boost trade activities to support a positive current account.
For instance, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), says Nigeria’s average daily crude oil production increased to 1.335 millions barrels per day (bpd), in December 2023. This represents 85, 00 bpd or 6.8 percent rise from 1.250 million bpd recorded in November 2023.
Although Nigeria currently target 2mbpd, available records from worldometer, indicate that Nigeria produced 1,938,543 Barrels per day and exported 1,654, 739 in 2016, and ranked as the 10th Oil producing country.
Meanwhile problems of agriculture in Nigeria include poor land tenure system, low level of irrigation farming, climate change and land degradation. Whilst the Food and Agricultural Organisation reported that around 26.5 million Nigerians are at risk of hunger in 2024, the report further indicated that the FCT, Sokoto, Borno and Zamfara states are most at risk.
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