How Formplus is helping the ERGP Focus Labs attract $25 billion investment in Nigeria
By the second quarter of 2016, it was announced that the Nigerian economy had entered an economic recession. A tragic situation, as the recession was closely related to the fall in crude oil prices as well as the decrease in FDI.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria in the third quarter of 2017 fell to $798.35 Million, from figures recorded from 2007–2017, which was $1.3 Billion.
To bring the Nigerian Economy out of the recession, the current administration under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari launched the mid term 2017–2020 Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) to tackle the causes of the recession and ultimately change the Nigerian economic trajectory.
TL;DR
Basically, the Federal Government of Nigeria plans to achieve a 7% growth rate by 2020 via the ERGP in order to attract public and private sector potential investors.
The Plan
After some research, six critical sectors were identified and three areas were selected, to deliver quick results. These focus areas are Agriculture & Transportation, Manufacturing & Processing and Power & Gas.
‘Focus Labs’ were then initiated in those selected areas, with clear goals and objectives — to accelerate new investments for critical projects and resolve complex inter-agency problems that inhibit private sector investment.
Of those problems, data collection and harmonisation were top of the list as they have to coordinate operations from over 40 agencies and commissions, significant to realising the ERGP vision.
Each Focus lab/agency has the task of attracting investments in Nigeria as their main goal, as this will drive change in those critical sectors, thus helping the Federal Government fulfill the goals of the economic growth plan.
Now this vision seeks to attract an investment commitment of $25billion (7.6 trillion Naira), as that’s what’s needed in order to bring the EGRP closer to meeting its 7% increase goal.
Already, there are over 100 private sector companies who have indicated interest in driving the ERGP and the plan is to get more Private and Foreign Investors to buy into the FG’s agenda.
According to Ms. Yewande Sadiku, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), the body in charge of coordinating foreign and local investments across all agencies, this is not the first time that Government is coming up with a “well thought-out economic plan”, as the problem has always been the “lack of a realistic implementation plan”.
TL;DR
To achieve the President’s ERGP vision of a 7% economic growth rate by 2020, Focus labs were created to attract investment of $25billion.
What’s different this time?
The Focus Labs have set up a solid implementation of the economic growth plan, right from the point of data collection from would-be investors to measuring desired results.
“The Focus Labs is to bring to the table, both the public and private sector operators for the purpose of identifying specific challenges in the business environment and proffer immediate and practical solutions that will fast track the process of attracting and sustaining responsible, inclusive and beneficial investment in accordance with the SDGs”. — Ms Yewande Sadiku.
Of particular importance to the NIPC was the data collection method for the Focus Labs, which needs to be seamless, in order to keep these investors’ mind at ease.
This was reiterated when the Minister of Budget and National Planning Senator Udoma Udo Udoma said that the main focus of the laboratories is to “eliminate the bottlenecks that hinder private sector investment in key sectors of the economy”.
To eliminate some of the identified bottlenecks, they created a simple data collection method using Formplus, so that potential investors would find it easy to complete the registration process.
With their online registration form, the NIPC can easily gather the required data to process applications faster and more efficiently, bringing them several steps closer to achieving the ERGP’s vision of attracting greater investment in Nigeria.
Side Note: You might want to check out how Formplus can help solve your data collection problems as well.
In the end…
It’s safe to say that the first step in using Technology to drive growth has been completed by the ERGP. By harmonising traditional data collection with modern Technology, the ERGP focus labs are well on their way to achieving the 2020 vision, and beyond.
