Atiku unveils policy plan, targets $900b economy by 2025

Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, has launched his policy plan to revamp the Nigerian economy and propel  it as one of the top 20 economies in the world

While unveiling the five-pronged plan on Monday, Atiku said human capital development, promoting economic diversification, reducing infrastructure deficit and promoting a competitive and open economy will be the pivots of the policy plan.

The former Vice President specifically said his plan will focus on job creation, particularly for the teeming Nigerian youth.

 He said the State’s critical policy priority is to build a broad-based, dynamic and competitive economy with a GDP of US$900 by the year 2025.

The PDP presidential candidate said the key d rivers of growth would be creating a conducive business environment, embracing private-public partnership and promoting stable macro economic stability.

He said agriculture would be given priority through access to finance, collaboration with states in the design and implementation of policy reforms, strengthen the market for agro commodities,  encourage investment in agro processing and increase productivity through modernization practices.

On his plan for the manufacturing sector, Atiku said he would work towards a sustained increase in manufacturing output from 9% to 30% of GDP by 2025, reduce the sector’s dependence on imported raw materials, and look inwards to promote value addition.

 In addition, he said his government would pursue a diversified production structure with more processing of domestic raw materials, as well as promote the competitiveness of the sector nationally and internationally.

The former Vice President promised to strengthen the medium and micro scale enterprises and make them export oriented, adding that the Nigeria Export Promotion Council and the Nigerian Investment Promotion Committee would be mandated to make the MSMEs work.

On oil and gas, he said his administration would boost oil and gas reserves and expand both the upstream and downstream production in addition to enthroning transparency in the sector.

Similarly, he said he would incentivize building modular refineries in the north, in addition to implementing the Petroleum Industry Bill.