Report

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Government Policies and Programmes on Economic Growth and Development

The purpose of the paper is to review the main economic goals of the current government, examine the implementation of policies and programmes and broadly assess their effectiveness. The economic strategies and goals of the government can be gleaned from the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020, annual budgets, the Medium Term Economic Framework, Fiscal Strategy Papers and the stated monetary policy objectives of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It should be noted that the ERGP was developed in 2017, after the two annual budgets of 2016 and 2017. However, the processes of consultations were such that the priorities of the budgets fed into the ERGP and the ERGP in turn informed the subsequent budgets and strategy documents of the government. Hence, there is no sequential syllogism or absurdity in assessing the policy and programme performance of the government in 2016 and 2017, based on the objectives of the ERGP, even though the document itself had not been published. Since there are many dimensions to the policies, the scope of the paper will selectively focus on the different dimensions of fiscal policy, monetary policy, as well as some specific key programmes such as the National Social Investment Policy (NSIP) and the many quasi-fiscal interventions implemented by the CBN.