The federal government has concluded arrangements to begin collection of data on Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the 36 States of the federation.
The total budget for States’ GDP computation in selected States – Kano, Cross River, Lagos, Gombe,? Niger and Anambra captured in the first phase, is to cost over N1 billion.
The move is to ascertain the volume of economic activities at the sub-national level, provide platform for healthy competition among States of the federation in line with building the nation’s economic growth and the actualisation of the Vision 2020.
The federal government is to contribute N313 million, each State N14 million while development partners, will contribute about N200 million.
The National Planning Commission (NPC) disclosed this in a statement issued in Abuja.
Similarly, the Secretary to the commission,? Ntufam Fidel Ugbo, has reiterated the need for States to set up planning commissions, in pursuance of the vision, and called on the three tiers of government to cooperate and be fully involved in actualising the said objective.
The agreement to establish state planning commission was reached in Calabar, Cross River State in 2008 at the Joint Planning Board/ National Council Development meeting.
According to the statement, Ugbo made the call during the council’s 2011 meeting with the theme: ‘Transformation Agenda And The States Plans As Vehicles For Implementation Of The Vision 20; 2020”.
He charged states to take planning very seriously, arguing that proper proposed commissions in the state should have the Governors as its chairman, in order to make them fully involved in the mandate and have stringent legislation backing it.
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His words: “states must take planning very seriously. Proper states planning commissions should have the Governors as the chairman of it so they can show strong commitment by buying in to it as well as own it too”.
He urged technocrats and experts on development and economic management at the meeting to come up with far reaching recommendations with respect to the modalities of the federal government’s transformation agenda and states’ plans.
Ugbo also added that the NPC is currently implementing reforms aimed at improving the effectiveness of the commission to reposition it for better service delivery like the newly established Monitoring and Evaluation department and States coordination unit.
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Also speaking at the meeting, the director of macroeconomics Analysis, NPC, Tunde? Lawal while presenting a paper on the update of State Gross Domestic Product (SGDP) computation in Nigeria, pointed out that, over the years the NPC has been working closely with the National Bureau of Statistics and the Governors’ Forum secretariat to collect data on State GDP.
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Lawal stated that the reasons for computing the State GDP was to ascertain the volume of economic activities in the sub-national level, provide platform for healthy competition among states of the federation, as well as to identify key drivers of the economic activities in each state, with a view to aiding policy decision at the sub–national level.
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?He noted that the transformation strategies called for expanding cassava production from 34 million tonnes to 51 million tonnes by 2015 and double the yields from 12.5 tonnes per hectare to 25 tonnes per hectare. Adesina stressed that if the option failed, government in the interest of national security had proposed three options, ranging from banning wheat import, increasing levies on wheat import and making it a luxury, or blending the 10 per cent substitution of cassava flour for wheat flour.
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In a separate interview with NAN, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, a member of the Presidential Economic Team and Chief Executive, Dangote Group, said that his team would do everything possible to ensure compliant. He stressed that there was need for government to put in place a mechanism to ensure total compliance by millers and that government should adopt a common policy on this. He said that for successful implementation, the Dangote Trust Fund, would create a N1 billion foundation fund with Bank of Industry for the utilisation of processors, farmers and other stakeholders in the cassava line. Mr. Rasheed Gbadamosi, former National Planning minister, said that the initiative if well implemented would create job for 1.2 million Nigerians and yielding over 1.6 million tonnes of cassava.
That is why the federal government, in its wisdom, invited the core rural farmers from the country to teach us how they were able to phase out poverty and hunger in their land.”
Part of the fruit of the collaboration, according to the SSC boss was the production of large scale fishes, poultry products, fruits, and different species of pepper among others.
Bello said he was optimistic that within the shortest period of time, Nigeria would not only attain self sufficiency in food production, but would have more than enough to export.
The leader of the 56-man Chinese farmer delegation, Prof. Xu Yuanfang, said they were focusing mainly on agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and water control.