By Eyo Nsima
The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has urged the incoming administration in Nigeria to give priority to trade facilitation and macroeconomic stability among others things in order to revive the nation’s economy.

Mr. Muda Yusuf, Director General, CPPE, who disclosed these in the CPPE ” Economic Agenda for the Incoming Administration”, stated: “The Nigerian economy is in a stumbling and fragile state and in dire need of a new direction. The political transition offers a great opportunity to chart a new course.
“The administration should establish quality economic governance consistent with tested economic principles and empirical evidence, and contextualized within socio-economic peculiarities. This is critical from the onset of the administration for signaling and investors’ confidence. “Good economic governance framework would entail the following: Setting up a Transition Committee on the Economy to come up with propositions of what needs to be done differently and ensure the delivery of quick wins in the first one month of the administration.

“Expand the role of markets for value delivery and boosting of private enterprise in the economy. State institutions do not have the capacity to manage enterprises.

“Robust monitoring and evaluation framework to regularly review the effectiveness and impact of economic policies and regulatory practices.

“Robust and regular stakeholder engagement by key government agencies to ensure proper alignment of policies with investors sentiments.”

He added: “Government institutions that play technical roles should be headed by tested technocrats.”
On fiscal consolidation, Yusuf emphasized the need to initiate budget reforms to ensure fiscal discipline, curb budget padding, and duplication of projects and review the service-wide votes to ensure transparency.

He said that the incoming would need to also eliminate fuel and foreign exchange subsidies to unlock more revenue for the government.”