The Vice President, Yemi Osinabjo disclosed that the introduction of Covid-19 stimulus packages like the Economic Sustainability Plan has been impactful in saving and creating millions of jobs in Nigeria.
The Vice President disclosed this in a statement on Monday after he Chaired a virtual meeting of the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC) measuring implementation of the plan.
What Vice President Osinbajo said
“Although the target of N2.3 trillion estimated to be spent under the plan has not been achieved just as yet, the Federal Government’s appropriation part of that total being N500 billion has been completely released by the end of May.
This makes it possible to attain several objectives of the ESP directly supporting a few million Nigerians.
While a total of 2,100,021 jobs have been saved and created altogether, the breakdown of the figures indicate that 1.3 million jobs have been retained through interventions in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) space, including the Payroll Support.
The 774,000 jobs from the Public Works Programme and 26,021 Jobs from construction /rehabilitation projects across the country were among those freshly created,” Osinbajo said.
He added that budget funds for Covid-19 stimulus were released in total and thanked the Minister of Finance for ensuring that it was done promptly, which means, in effect, that as far as the budget goes, Nigeria has been able to do what we practically promised to do.
“I know that if we were able to infuse N2.3 trillion into the Nigerian economy, we will not have the employment figures that we have today, we will not have the problems that we have today, they will be significantly reduced,” he said.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported last month that President Muhammadu Buhari praised Nigeria’s effort in exiting recession, citing the successful execution of the Economic Sustainability Plan, launched by the FG to tackle the effects of the Covid pandemic on the economy.
“The Economic Sustainability Plan, our plan for the covid pandemic, is currently being executed, the plan is primarily focused on the non-oil sector which has recorded phenomenal growth, contributing over 90% to GDP growth in Q1 2021,” the president said.
Buhari added that although marginal, Nigeria recorded GDP growth over 2 quarters, stating that “this is evidence of successful execution of economic sustainability plan by the FG.”
