By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria is nowhere near its target of $100 billion investment annually to achieve a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $33,000, according to the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning Mr Abubakar Bagudu.
The Minister spoke in Abuja at the ongoing management retreat of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, according to a statement issued by his Media Assistant, Mr Bolaji Adebiyi.
According to the Minister, this is frustrating the efforts contained in the Nigeria Economic Agenda 2050, which requires the average Nigerian to have a value of $33,000 per head. The GDP per capita is a metric that breaks down the country’s GDP to an amount per person.
However, the Minister said the Nigerian economy is nowhere near the target.
Current data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that Nigeria has a GDP per capita of $1,087.89 as of 2024.
Mr Bagudu said that for the country to realise the target, it must enthrone a sound financial system to attract investments.
He said the current financing level was smaller than that but explained that President Bola Tinubu’s administration had undertaken bold and courageous economic reforms to boost its revenue.
“However, we still need to be where we should be; we are not near the kind of flows we expect,” the minister noted.
To buttress his point, he cited the $20 billion federal budget size, which he said was too small compared with other countries like Brazil and Indonesia, which have similar population sizes and have $750 billion and $210 billion budgets, respectively.
The minister also explained that a sound financial system would attract domestic and foreign investments to finance its development plan.