The federal government said its target of attracting $25 billion private investment through its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) ‘Focused Laboratories’ is still on course.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen.
Udo Udoma said this yesterday in Abuja, at the progress meeting of the ERGP Focused Labs with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said the meeting was to review what the participants of the Focused Labs had done in the past three weeks.
The programme will end on April 26.
“The ERGP Focused Labs was set up to identify and unlock investments from the private sector by resolving complex inter-agency problems that act as a barrier to private sector investment.
“Through the Focused Labs, we brought together investors, heads of agencies of government into a single environment.
“From what we have seen so far, and the data available from the three labs, we are clearly on course to meeting our target of 25 billion dollars investment commitment. “We are on course but more work needs to be done. A number of problems have been identified.
We have to spend the next two weeks tackling each of the problems one by one,” Udoma said.
The minister explained that through the Focused Labs, 59 projects in the ERGP, with maximum economic viability had been selected to be priotised. “These are projects that are near ready but require just a little push to get them onboard.
“I am pleased to note that in the Power and Gas plan, progress has been made with regards to issues of issuance of licences, payments, customs and excise papers, funding potential partnerships and other issues.
“In the Manufacturing and Processing plan, two projects have already been able to procure letters from the ministries concerned to move ahead with the projects.
“For the Agriculture and Transport plan, progress is already being made to develop a market driven Out-Growers Scheme that will benefit small to medium size farmers across the country.
“Looking at all the four to five star projects that should be ready for approval by the end of this week, we are positive that the aim of resolving inter-agency bottlenecks is being achieved,” he said.
