-By Victoria Opeyemi
The year 2020 is one year the world will not forget in a hurry with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and its attendant negative effects on world economy. Nigeria had a devasting hit as businesses and households were adversely affected as Nigeria slips into a second recession in a four-year frame.
Experts believe that if there is expansion in all the sectors of the economy there will be job creation. The last Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report on job creation has the projection that the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) made by the country did not meet the target.
Nigeria has entered recession in the second quarter of 2016 following the slump in global market oil price and this made the federal government to look towards the implementation of the ERGP 2017-2020 to forestall future occurrences but the Nigerian economy still slip into recession in third quarter 2020.
Nonetheless, ERGP team has put up structure that will make the country self reliance especially diversification of the economy and it has started working but the pandemic affected everything that supported the growth put in place.
The ERGP 2017-2020 targeted an annual average growth at 4.62% over the period to bring inflation with a single digit of 9.9% by 2020 but did not meet its objectives.
Nigeria annual inflation rate surge to a 16 straight months to hit 15.75% in December 2020 and the highest since November 2017.
After the economy team puts its plan in place, the country went through five months of negative growth and thereafter twelve months of positive growth up to the first quarter of 2020 before the pandemic.
ERGP 2017-2020 reach its final stage of implementation in December 2020 after the government has developed the economic sustainability plan to serve as a transition while a successor plan is currently in the preparation stage.
The plan as a matter of conscious effort is comprehensive and have the capacity to accelerate the attainment of various economic global agenda.
The government is expecting significant improvement in the micro economic performance by second quarter of 2021 through implementation of several measures in the new plan all in the hope to overcome fiscal constraints.
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