LCCI President Lists Nigeria Can Achieve SDG Target
GILBERT EKUGBE
In a bid to meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target by 2030, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has called on managers of the Nigerian economy to prioritize developmental efforts on statistics, data planning, efficient processes and sincerity of delivery.
The president, LCCI, Mrs Toki Mabogunje in an interview with InsideBusiness said Nigeria must retrace its steps back to the issues of learning to plan well, acquiring statistics and data for planning for the common man and the unborn generation.
In her words, “Statistics, data, planning, efficient processes and sincerity of delivery, that is what I think it takes for everything we are doing in health, education, town planning to mention a few.”
Citing Lagos as one of the States that has benefited from effective data and statistics, she added that the State has been able to achieve some level of progress compared to other states in the country owing to effective planning.
On the high rising debt profile of the country, she advised the federal government to put a cap on how much of borrowing the country does, adding that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) is the surest way to address the nation’s infrastructural issues
“For example, I like the idea of what is being done with Dangote and with few others over road development where they are partnering with the government there for every kilometre of road they actually put in place, they are going to have tax palliatives and other sorts of incentives. We need to do a lot more of that. We need to do a lot more of PPPs and when I look at the United Kingdom and some of the things that are going on in the country, there are lots of PPPs going on. The government needs to understand that the government takes a back seat in these things, the government is a policy developer, policymaker and they need to create that space for private sector to make things happen. I think we need a lot more private sector engagement that is where the push should be,” she added.
She said plans are underway to deepen its engagements with the State government on ease of doing business and policy formulation, saying that the chamber is seeking to be more engaged in areas that affect its members and the business community.
“One of the things we certainly want to do is deepen our engagements with the State Government that we are with. We have a bit of a relationship right now that they even consult us on certain issues before they can embark on them, but we need to deepen it. We want to be more engaged in areas that affect our members so that is the Ministry of Commerce primarily and at the federal level, we want to engage even deeper with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the President’s office and already this year, we are seeking appointment to meet the President, the Governor, but we are also going to be meeting with the Senate and one area I think we are not engaging enough in is the whole issue around legislation and making sure that the laws that would enable what we want to see happen are passed and getting our legislatures to actually understand the context within which the Nigerian people make the request that they are making so we are planning to do that as well,” she stated.
Comments are closed.