Cabinet Takes Steps to Address Economic, Agricultural Challenges

The Federal Executive Council on Monday considered the state of the Nigerian economy and how to quickly grow it for the benefit of citizens of the nation.

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, revealed this while briefing State House Correspondents, at the end of the maiden meeting of the council presided over by president Bola Tinubu.

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He said the council also examined the eight-point agenda of the President as the nucleus of the current administration.

“First, he congratulated everybody and emphasized the high expectations of Nigerians and he encouraged us to be bold and courageous and innovative and to act with urgency in delivering a better life to all Nigerians. Essentially, we went through an exercise of looking at where things stood, regarding the economy, the growth rate, the exchange rate, inflation, unemployment and so on.

“The overriding conclusion is that we’re not where we should be and we also examined the President’s eight-point agenda, that is the eight priority areas for moving the Nigerian economy forward and for delivering to Nigerians and those are basically food security; ending poverty, economic growth and job creation, access to capital, particularly consumer credit, inclusivity in all its dimensions, particularly as regards youths and women, improving security, improving the playing field on which people and particularly companies operate, rule of law, and of course, fighting corruption,” the Finance Minister explained.

Wale Edun further disclosed that plans are already on to achieve government’s targets within three years.

“It is around that matrix that the plans and the targets of what will be delivered in the next three years or so were identified, discussed and imputes were given by various ministers and we’ll now go away with the marching order to refine further the targets in particular and within weeks to start rolling out policies and programmes to turn around the economy and make things better for all Nigerians. That really is the substance of what the discussions were all about,” he added.

Agriculture

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, told Journalists that the council also considered the issue of improving the lives of citizens by assuring that food is available and affordable to all.

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He said steps have also been taken to address the challenges confronting the agricultural sector.

“One of the most important aspects of the presentation by the President was the improvement of the livelihood of the citizenry of this country. Key in that is food security which has to do with the availability and affordability of nutritional food for the population.

“Now the industry is faced with so many challenges; insecurity, flooding as well as the invasion of migratory pests, killer birds and insects that have been creating havoc in the northern part of this country and we have the harvest season coming up and we need to urgently tackle that issue in collaboration with the State governments affected,” he said.