The absence of state governments input into past national economic plans have been identified as a major reason for the failure of previous programme.

Minister of finance Zainab Ahmed made this revelation in Abuja at the 19th National Council on Development Planning (NCDP) meeting.

The finance minister said that the notion that past national economic plans had failed “was based on the assertion that the Plans were more of federal government rather than national.”

According to her, “this notion had denied previous plans of the needed cooperation from state governments, which led to little success recorded so far.”

Making reference to the successes of the previous plans, she said: “you would agree with me that previous plans witnessed varying degree of successes. For instance, the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020, which was crafted at the wake of the global economic meltdown of 2016, was able to pull Nigeria economy out of recession.”

The meeting is an annual event organised along with the Joint Planning Board (JPB) meeting by the Budget and Planning arm of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in conjunction with state governments for policy formulation and implementation of contemporary economic issues.