Deputy finance minister Doris Uzoka-Anite has reiterated the federal government’s commitment to actualising President Bola Tinubu’s $1 trillion economy.
Ms Uzoka-Anite said this at the annual general meeting of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria in Abuja, on Wednesday.
The minister said that the reforms had a solid foundation for sustained double-digit growth.
Ms Uzoka-Anite said that the country’s GDP was currently estimated at about 375 billion dollars.
She said it would require sustained annual growth of 10 per cent to 12 per cent over the next decade to reach the one-trillion-dollar mark.
“That is an ambitious target, and this administration is not shy about saying so. Ambitious targets are what move nations.
“Upon assumption of office in 2023, this administration inherited an economy marked by structural distortions. These include a fuel subsidy regime that gulped over five trillion annually and a multiple exchange rate system that undermined investor confidence,” she said.
According to her, removing the fuel subsidy and unifying the foreign exchange market were difficult but necessary steps to restore market integrity.
“Both decisions imposed short-term pain; neither decision has been reversed. Today, those reforms are being vindicated by the data.
“The January 2026 decision by S&P Global Ratings to revise the country’s outlook to positive while its B-/B credit ratings, attributing it to measurable improvements in the country’s fiscal, external and monetary positions,” Ms Uzoka-Anite said.
She said the government had restructured the budget framework to clearly distinguish between recurrent and investment expenditure, with a focus on channelling resources toward infrastructure and growth-enhancing projects.
“We are now asking not just how much we are spending, but what we are building with what we spend,” she said.
The minister said that the second phase of reforms, anchored on the Disinflation and Growth Acceleration Strategy, was designed to unlock productive capacity and deliver non-inflationary growth of over seven per cent by 2027.
She said that DGAS, developed in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria, was built on nine pillars.
The minister listed the pillars as capital mobilisation through development finance instruments, sectoral acceleration in agriculture, energy, technology, and manufacturing, and nationwide energy expansion. Others are digital infrastructure development and large-scale human capital training.
She said that the strategy also prioritised an expanded consumer credit platform to enable Nigerians access structured financing for housing, healthcare, education and other essential needs.
According to her, about 70 per cent of the raw materials used in local industrial production are imported, and this needs to be reversed.
Ms Uzoka-Anite said the Dangote Refinery was an example of the benefits of domestic processing of resources, adding that similar models would be replicated across agriculture, mining, health and manufacturing.
The minister said that the country had submitted its ECOWAS tariff offer under the African Continental Free Trade Area, committing to zero duties on 90 per cent of goods traded within Africa.
She said that the move was strategic, repositioning in an evolving global trade environment.
(NAN)
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