According to a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Vice President spoke on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland,
He disclosed that the government is in talks with the CBN to fully implement the “free-float” foreign exchange policy, but that it cannot put a time on the “logical conclusion” of the talks.
Osinbajo said, “It is difficult to give a timing about currency movements as you can imagine, but what it is really is that what is the policy that is going to lead to that?
“We already have a foreign exchange policy. Now, that policy, that is the point I have been making all along, that stabilising that policy, ensuring that it works fully, is really what we are trying to get to, in our interactions with the central bank, which of course is independent.
“We are trying to get them to see that you need to implement this policy fully. central bank of course has its own constraints; we have to be careful.
“We simply can’t allow the currency to float; we have to look at all of the market conditions and all of that. But really, the point we are making is that we must create the environment which will help the central bank as well.
“That will come from an increasing supply of dollars from oil exportation. Once we have more dollars, central bank obviously has more confidence in floating the currency.”
The Vice President also stated that the government would launch its economic turnaround plan in February 2017, adding that it would span for another four years.
According to him, “We would formally launch the four-year economic recovery approved plan in mid-February.
“We’ve already written it out, many parts of it…we are discussing, but it would be formally launched as a document in the middle of February.
“But our 2017 budget is actually based on the economic recovery approved plan. We had strategic implementation plan, which we started with in 2016. The economic recovery approved plan is actually a development of the strategic implementation plan.”
Osinbajo also disclosed that the federal government would tap into Nigeria’s huge pension fund to finance infrastructure in the country.
He stated that the administration of President Muhammedu Buhari was “committed to investing more in infrastructure,” than in previous times, adding that the government was working on how to tap into Nigeria’s huge pension fund to finance infrastructure in the country.
Osinbajo stated that for this to be done, “we have to first derisk such financing models for infrastructure.”
He disclosed that the programme also had a social welfare component to help the people survive as they were being empowered.
Akande said the Vice President participated and spoke in several events, including a packed international Business Interaction Group of investors focused exclusively on Nigeria. He also spoke at a panel of Building Africa, joined by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and televised live by the CNBC Africa.
Asked to mention what kind of radical ideas that could advance the African continent, Osinbajo cited the Nigerian government’s Social Investment Programme, which he said, for the first time half a trillion naira was being budgeted by the federal government for Social Investment Programmes.
Osinbajo declared that investment in people, in their skills and in youths would transform the African continent, explaining that “it is about investment in people, in their skills, in youths, that we have a N500 billion allocation in our budget last year and proposed for this year also”.
Referring to N-Power scheme’s training component for young graduates, and non graduates in artesanal and industrial middle-level skills, the vice president said it was an investment in education and educating large numbers of people in a short time.
“It is a radical thing to make that kind of serious investment in education,” he said, referring to the planned N100,000 supporting grants to students of higher institutions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, STEM.
An active engagement with, and encouraging the private sector, Osinbajo said, was also of a great deal, referring to the example of the 650,000bpd refinery project of the Dangote Group, which is going to be the largest single-line refinery in the world.
He said the Buhari administration was very confident about the recovery of the Nigerian economy, asserting that: “It is not difficult to get out of where we are if we understand why we are where we are”.
The Vice President reminded his audience that the Nigerian economy remained indisputably the biggest in terms of size of the economy.
Speaking at the Buisness Interaction Group attended by several international and local investors and business interests, and hosted by the Nigerian delegation, he said the newly developed Economic Recovery Growth Plan of the Buhari administration had been specifically designed to take the country out of recession and in the long term, continue to grow the economy.
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