President Bola Tinubu has promised to create about 50 million jobs through the Ministry of Trade and Investment.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Federal Executive Council, Tinubu said the job creation is part of the three-year economic revival plan to address the social and economic challenges affecting the country.
Briefing journalists at the end of the FEC meeting, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, explained that the Tinubu administration met a very bad economy with inflation at 24 per cent.
“Per capita has fallen steadily, inflation is at 24 per cent, unemployment is high; you know they are rebasing the way in which it’s calculated. Either way, it is high and youth unemployment is even unacceptably high. These are the key metrics that we have met. We met a bad economy and the promise of Mr President is to make it better,’’ he stated.
The minister also said that the Federal Government was not in a position to borrow money at this time, adding the emphasis is on how to create a macro-economic environment where both local and foreign investors will invest and increase production.
The government also assured Nigerians that the Tinubu administration will not rely on borrowing and that he had pledged to be transparent, honest and accountable to the people.
Providing the highlights of the council meeting, Edun noted, ‘’First he (Tinubu) congratulated everybody and emphasised 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.’’
Speaking further, he said, ‘’It is around those matrices that the plans and the targets of what will be delivered in the next three years or so were identified, discussed and inputs were given by various ministers.
“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 was all about.’’
On her part, the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr Doris Anite, said that the President has to create 50mn jobs.
