The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday launched the Economic and Growth Recovery Plan (ERGP) Focus Laboratories on power, agriculture and manufacturing to fast-track economic growth. Osinbajo who launched the initiative in Abuja stated that the newly inaugurated Focus Labs would further boost economic growth and ensure that Nigeria continued its journey of building a competitive economy.
He further explained that the laboratory groups were meant to bring private/public sector participants and potential investors together to think through the implementation of the specific areas of focus. According to him;
“The labs will operate by bringing together all private and public sector officials to achieve the ERGP’s objective of reaching seven per cent economic growth by 2020. The Focus Labs are being conducted in three selected areas to accelerate investment and job creation.
“These specific areas are agriculture and transport, manufacturing and processing and finally power and gas sector. We believe that working together as a group, we will be able to achieve these specific objectives that have been set out for us.”
Also speaking, the Minister of Budget and Planning, Sen. Udo Udoma maintained that the Focus Laboratories would eliminate the bottlenecks that hinder private sector investment in the agriculture, manufacturing and power sector. The Minister noted that the move became imperative because 245.1 billion dollars was required to implement the ERGP, out of which 195.98 billion dollars was expected from private sector and 49.15 billion dollars from the public sector.
He disclosed that the three main objectives of the initiative were to create new investment opportunities for critical projects, job creation and resolution of complex inter-agency problems that inhibited private sector investment.
