Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the Federal Government has spent N1.7 trillion in capital investment in two budget years.
Osinbajo disclosed this while addressing participants at the 9th Presidential Quarterly Business Forum held at the State House Banquet Hall on Monday in Abuja.
The vice president said that infrastructure development was crucial in economic growth and job creation.
He commended the commitment of the participants to expanding the work being done by the Industrial Training Fund(ITF) and the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) on skills acquisition.
According to him, there was the need to put emphasis on skill training and placing large numbers of young people in the workplace.
He said:-
These must take into account the need to provide real value to the private sector through the ITF scheme and where necessary, develop optimal incentives to support the private sector.
“It will also be important that we commit to constituting sector skills councils and encourage the development of these councils for various sectors, especially in sectors we have identified as being of priority for job creation.
“I am convinced that we can crack the jobs problem and we are in the right direction.
“First, by Investing in infrastructure; we are investing more in infrastructure today than any previous governments in our history.
“We have spent so far in two budgets, N1.7 trillion in capital investment – that is the largest in the history of the country despite earning 60 per cent less; we are doing far more with far less resources’’.
Osinbajo said that the Federal Government was also looking at solving the power problem.
He said that the Federal Government would review the previous power privatisation and how to enhance capacity of business people by boosting power supply.
The vice president said that Job creation had been a priority of President Muhammadu led administration as the surest way of creating jobs was by enabling the private sector to do business easily.
He said:-
“Opportunities are created in agriculture and the agro-allied industry, services, manufacturing, among others.
“But we realised that that would not solve the immediate problems of thousands of graduates who have no jobs or the millions who are at the bottom of the trading pyramid barely eking out a living.
“This, we believed created a compelling argument for direct intervention by government’’.
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