Udoma Udo Udoma, Nigeria’s minister of budget and national planning, has said that although the country is recording positive changes in its economic recovery plans, more work still needs to be done to sustain the positive momentum and that this will require using the best talents and tapping into the entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians.
The minister who made this comment as a keynote speaker at the 49th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPMN) in Abuja on Tuesday evening noted that enhanced capacity of the Nigerian workforce and the resultant improvement in productivity can contribute significantly to improvement in national output.
Speaking on the topic, “The Nigerian Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), 2017-2020: People as a Critical Success Factor”, Udoma said that the whole essence of the ERGP is to achieve a massive and sustained increase in national output, adding that this is a plan that will drive Nigeria on to a path of sustained, diversified and inclusive growth that will change the country in a fundamental way.
“As President Muhammadu Buhari said, through the implementation of the ERGP, we will make Nigeria a self-reliant country in which ‘we grow what we eat and consume what we make’. We intend to build a country that is an industrial and agricultural powerhouse. A country where poverty is reduced and prosperity enhanced.
“We are already seeing early positive signs that our strategy is working. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) numbers indicate that in the 2nd quarter of this year we achieved a positive GDP growth of .55%. This means we are now officially out of recession.
“Our inflation rate is gradually and consistently easing up since the beginning of this year; external reserves and foreign direct investments (FDIs) have improved following the continuous stabilization of the exchange rate market; and the industrial sector growth has turned positive after recording nine consecutive quarters of contraction,” he said.
To sustain the positive tempo, the minister challenged the CIPMN to develop templates and modules of capacity development that can improve the productivity of the Nigerian workforce.
“As the foremost personnel management institution in the country, managing people is what your members do. I challenge you, individually and collectively, to develop templates and modules of capacity development that can improve the productivity of our people,” he said.
