President Bola Tinubu has said his administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda can leverage Nigeria’s population and resources to build a trillion-dollar economy within the next decade.
The President noted that achieving the ambitious goal of creating a trillion-dollar economy in ten years can be further facilitated by ongoing efforts on job creation, access to capital for SMEs, inclusiveness, the rule of law and the fight against hunger, poverty and corruption.
President Tinubu made this declaration during the opening session of the 2023 National Engineering Conference, Exhibition and Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) in Abuja on Tuesday.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, who represented the President at the event, maintained that Nigeria’s rich population and resources can transform the economy to be worth a trillion dollars within the next decade.
While acknowledging the hard times most Nigerians are currently experiencing, the President noted that “the difficult times are indeed temporary, but the benefits will be permanent.”
The President highlighted his administration’s efforts in transforming the economy and creating opportunities for citizens, saying:
- “I have had engagements with stakeholders across Nigeria’s manufacturing sector. I am very much aware of the problems and challenges that are uppermost in your minds: access to low-cost capital, multiple taxation, infrastructure issues, foreign exchange, and export obstacles, among others.
- “I am happy to let you know that we are tackling, with unprecedented boldness and decisiveness, each and every one of these issues.”
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The President further explained that his administration seeks to increase the country’s tax revenues while reducing the burden on individuals and businesses at the same time.
- “It may sound like a contradiction, but it is not: by streamlining the number of taxes, introducing greater efficiency, and blocking the loopholes through which leakages occur, we can and will deliver less burdensome tax regimes to businesses and employers of labour.
- “The government’s focus in foreign exchange has been to abolish an unwieldy and much-abused rate regime, setting the foundation for transparent price discovery and all the other elements required to attract substantial inflows into a properly run official market,” the President added.
On access to capital, President Tinubu said he ordered the creation of several targeted financing interventions, including the new single-digit interest-rate fund to provide 75 billion to support manufacturing enterprises.
- “As you are also all aware, the Central Bank, now under new management, is back to prioritizing its core mandates of inflation management and exchange rate stability,” he added.
