Friday, January 09, 2015

Fed Govt To Bring Back National Development Plans


The National Planning Minister, Dr. Abubakar Sulaiman, said yesterday that the Federal Government will soon bring back the National Development Plan to ensure sustainable infrastructural development.

The Nation reports the minister spoke through the commission’s Acting Secretary, Bassey Akpanyung, at a one-day media workshop on “Strategic, sustainable promotion and marketing of the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP).”

Sulaiman said returning the National Development Plan was part of government’s strategy to develop the nation’s infrastructure. He noted that the best infrastructure the nation has had since independence were captured in the first four development plans, which were terminated in the middle 1980s. According to him, what the country has started with Vision 20-2020, Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the Transformation Agenda is to return the country to the “golden tradition of infrastructural development”.

The minister said: “In pursuance of the ideal of sustainable development, the administration adopted integrated and all inclusive approach to infrastructure delivery as practiced in some other industrialized nations, to systematically facilitate and promote economic growth and development.

“For us as a government, we are convinced that the NIIMP, if effectively implemented, will give us a win-win situation. In effect, government understood the NIIMP itself, as a source of massive job opportunity and wealth creation in a manner that recognize equity as well as promotes poverty reduction. However, this can be achieved through the cooperation of all the stakeholders.

“Construction of infrastructure projects across the geo-political zones and linking different sectors potentially translate to economic growth and prosperity.”
He noted that in the struggle to market “the unique investment opportunities NIIMP connotes, the foremost among the strategic stakeholders is the media.”

No comments: