The Federal Government on Monday declared Nigeria the 39th world’s largest economy.
The Minister of National Planning, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, said this as the inauguration of the Central Working Committee on the review of the implementation of the 1st National Implementation Plan (NIP) for the Vision 20-2020 in Abuja.
Usman said the country, ranked 44th before now, achieved the feat following the ongoing Transformation Agenda of the Federal Government, particularly its three-phased National Implementation Plan components.
He said the plan is to make Nigeria one of the biggest economies by 2020.
Usman said: “What gets measured is done.
“By setting a target and measuring the progress that we are making we are more likely to achieve, not just sitting back.
“Like I used to say during the opening exercise, we may wake up by 2020 if we don’t do anything systematic and find out that we are now number 50 from 44.
“But from the way we are tracking and really pushing, we are already….
“I think, unfortunately the Statistician General is out of the country but is represented and I have not cross-checked with the latest GDP growth rate, but the last time I checked, we have actually climbed to about 39 from the 44 we have been.
“So you can see we are making progress there in terms of GDP Per Capital and we are going to make another big progress when the GDP rebasing figures come out.”
The Chairman of the CWC is Mr. Moses Akpabosa.
The committee’s Terms of Reference are to determine the scope of the 1st NIP review period; develop and agree on template for the review; determine the structure and format for the review of the 1st NIP; and work closely with Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) and National Planning Commission with a view to obtaining relevant inputs on the achievements of the Key Performance Indicators and reviewing the macroeconomic framework and other sectoral targets for the Plan period.