Delta State Economic Advisory Team has evolved five-pillar strategy for the rapid transformation of the state’s economic landscape.
According to Mr. Bismarck Rewane, chairman of the Team, the pillars are capacity building, entrepreneurship, infrastructure, policy and markets.
He said that the goal of creating an industrialized Delta State will be driven by the public-private sector partnership with government creating a clement environment for investment, a task which the Economic Advisory Team will complement the role of the state’s under the theme “Delta Beyond Oil”.
Addressing journalists in Lagos after a stakeholders meeting attended by the members, Mr. Bismarck Rewane, said that it was the interest of the group to develop an economic roadmap which, according to him, will be used to evaluate and showcase some government’s initiatives which have not been very well articulated in the market place.
He noted that a lot of work had gone on in the state and stressed the need for the private sector to complement government’s efforts. This, he said, will create a structure where both domestic and international investors will key into the development agenda and foster a multiplier effect for accelerated and sustained economic growth in the state.
According to Rewane who is also the managing director of Financial Derivatives, the team will unveil its framework by the end of the first quarter of the year as, according to him, no meaningful achievement will be made without a proper guideline, even as he disclosed that the team was going to engage the best minds within and outside the state as well as foreign resource persons and such other partners as Chevron, strategy consultants.
In his remarks at the meeting, Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan, said oil is no longer adequate in meeting the developmental challenges of the state, hence the adoption of the theme “Delta beyond oil” in anchoring the economic roadmap. He said many countries without oil or major natural resources have been able to develop their economies and are now better off than Nigeria through concerted planning and harnessing of available manpower and provision of value added services.
Governor Uduaghan noted that the Federal Government exerts almost total control over the development of infrastructure such as electricity that are critical to the provision of enabling environment for investment. He urged the team to evolve ways to effectively engaging government at the centre with a view to creating an avenue for the state to scale the institutional and legal hurdles posed by extant laws that gave the Federal Government enormous powers to the detriment of states.
He said the team is made up of people who have distinguished themselves in the private sector, noting that they are not being paid for their services.
Explaining further, the Commissioner for Economic Planning who is also the secretary to the Economic Advisory Team, Mr. Kenneth Okpara, noted that the first step is the institutionalization of the idea and the next is building of the capacity which, according to him, is ongoing.
He said the dashboard will enable the Government and Economic Advisory Team assess which projects have failed or succeeded, adding that it will help measure and properly evaluate performance and enable government see what has been done as it has become a process of measuring performance.
Okpara stated that the dashboard will foster proactive measures towards the delivery of effective governance in the state as it will make for effective evaluation and monitoring given that it will be driven by the right kind of people.
