 I am very pleased to be here again to speak to this inspiring gathering of Nigerian patriots in the diaspora, but who are actively engaged in investing and in even in shaping policy in Nigeria. This is the third summit, and this is my third appearance, and my reason each time I accept the invitation is the same. Our diaspora is one of the most vital resources that we have, a literally endless reservoir of talent, of trade, of investment opportunities, of tourism, education, culture, and sports opportunities. But perhaps more important is the sheer range of well-trained, honed, and experienced talents that our diaspora represent. It is that potential, not necessarily just remittances, that make our diaspora network an endless source of economic hope and social aspiration. When we met last year, little did we know that the world will be afflicted by possibly the worst health crisis and the most devastating economic downturn in a generation. For us in Nigeria, as with many developing countries, it meant, you know, as of this quarter, as of last quarter, a minus 6% slowdown in GDP, a sad development, especially after 12 consecutive quarters of growth. And so in response, we designed an ambitious 2.3 trillion-naira economic sustainability plan. And the focus of that plan is on creating jobs, first by mass agriculture program, already with enumerated 5 million farmers, and geotagged them to their farmlands. Also a mass housing program where we're building 300,000 homes in all states of the federation using local materials and using small to medium-sized construction companies and using direct labor. What we plan to do is that in every one of the sites, already we're active in about 11 states, and what we're doing is that we're engaging very small contractors, small construction companies, not any of the big ones, although we're using some of the big ones as coordinators. And so we also, on the sites, ensure that we have facilities for block making, for making or panels, windows, doors, etc. All of this locally produced. The whole idea is to generate jobs, generate opportunities and income in every locality that we're functioning in. We also have a solar program to make 5 million connections across the country. In other words, we're going to be putting 5 million solar home systems across Nigeria. That will service in all about 25 million individuals. So this particular project, the solar homes project, involves a credit extended to solar home systems assemblers and retailers by the CBN. In fact, all of our programs are actually supported by credit facilities which the CBN is offering. That credit facility is about 1.3 trillion Naira in all, and it is, of course, as you can imagine, it's an substantial part, more than half of the 2.3 trillion. So the whole idea is that the CBN is offering these credit facilities through the commercial banks to support a housing program, to support the solar home systems program, and also to support the agriculture program. What we've also tried to do in response to COVID-19 and also in furthering our own economic policy is to attempt to make the fiscal environment as attractive as possible. This is important for us because the only way by which we can actually attract local investments, and not to even speak of the sort of investments that we're expecting from the diaspora, the only way to attract local investments is to ensure that we have a fiscal environment that's attractive. We have an environment that makes sense for people to invest in. So what we've done is that we've used the instrumentality of the finance acts to make or propose significant reform. Let me just very quickly explain the finance acts. Every time we have a budget now since last year, we've also proposed a finance bill to the National Assembly. Basically, the finance bill looks at several fiscal issues that we want to legislate on or amendments we want to make in the law, which would make it easier for us to implement the budget and also to ease the fiscal environment or make the fiscal environment more friendly. So we started passing finance acts from last year and we're proposing a second finance act this year. So I'll just talk briefly about what we achieved with the finance act last year. So last year, the finance act, we passed legislation making it giving small companies with a turnover of less than 25 million a year tax exemption from both companies, from companies income tax, while medium-sized companies with a turnover of between 25 million to 100 million, will now pay companies income tax at a lower rate of 20%. So for those companies, they used to pay 30% income tax. Now they'll be paying 20%, well, since last year when this was introduced, they've been paying 20%. And then services provided by microfinance banks are completely exempted from tax, from VAT. So no microfinance bank pays VAT now for its services. Withholding tax rates also on roads, on bridges, on buildings and power plant construction contracts has been reduced from 5% to 2.5%. So those who are doing construction on contracts and proposing for construction on contracts pay a reduced rate. They no longer pay 5%, they now pay 2.5%. Now in the proposed 2020 finance bill, we have gone a bit further. We are reducing by 50% the minimum tax rate. So the minimum tax rate used to be 0.5% now is reduced to 0.25% for gross turnover for the financial years ending between January 1st, 2020 and December 31st, 2021. So we reduced the minimum tax rate by 50% by half. Then we have exemption of small companies with less than 25 million turnover from payment of the 2% education tax under the tertiary education trust fund or TET fund. As you know, what happens is that companies pay a 2% tax. In addition to whatever taxes they pay, they also pay a 2% TET fund tax, an education trust fund tax. But what we are saying now is that they are no longer required to pay the no longer required to pay for companies that have a turnover of less than 25 million Naira. They are no longer required to pay that 2% tax for the education tax fund. So their tax burden is reduced. The other point is with respect to software acquisition by companies. Now when companies acquire software for their company operations, in the past that was treated as an overhead, now we are going to treat it as a qualifying expenditure for tax deduction to improve the ease of doing business. In other words, we now regard software acquisition as a capital expenditure and we think that that is the right approach to it because software today is essentially the software for different business processes and all that. Essentially the machine that the companies work on and so we see that it should be treated as a capital expenditure as well and this of course would improve the liquidity of companies and generally encourage ease of doing business. We have also done, there are also some specific reductions, for instance the transport sector is one which we think has, the transport sector is one which we think has been under a great deal of problems, a great deal of tension, a great deal of tension and what we have tried to do is that we have seen that unless we do something about duties, especially for transportation, for cars, trucks, buses, etc., we may find ourselves in a much more difficult situation than ever before. As you know, we removed petroleum subsidies completely since March of this year. The implication of that of course is that at least in the short term petroleum prices would go up and we expect that it would stabilize and the competition would actually reduce. But what we then saw was that this meant increase in transportation costs, etc., and this was not helped by the very heavy duties that we had around trucks, buses and even motor vehicles generally. So what we've done now is that we've reduced duties on motor vehicles for transportation of goods from 35% to 10%. We've also, we're proposing a reduction of the levy on motor vehicles for the transportation of persons, in other words, you know, cars, just cars for transporting persons. There used to be a levy of 35% and that has now been reduced to 5%. We also have proposing a reduction in duties on tractors from 35% to 10%. So that, of course, will support some of the work that we're doing in agricultural, mass agriculture and, of course, several of the agricultural initiatives going on around the country. There are also quite a few other innovations that are going on. Some of them may not be necessarily relevant to business, but the finance act, as I said, is one of the efforts that we're making to constantly review the business environment and make changes in every budget cycle as we see fit. So these are some of the, if you like, some of the new things that we're doing in the business environment to make things easier for those who are doing business and, of course, to generally encourage ease of doing business around the country. One of the critical things that you've probably noticed is that food prices have gone up. This is, of course, an account of several different issues that have made this the way it is. One, of course, again, is transportation. Transportation of food from the hinterland up to many of the urban areas where we notice, of course, our food prices have gone up. The other is flooding in several parts of the country, especially the bread baskets of the country that mean considerable flooding. KB State, for instance, where quite a bit of rice is grown, had a lot of its rice fields destroyed by flooding. And we've also had several, of course, the supply chain problems caused by COVID-19 and most recently by some of the riots that followed the end-sales protests in different parts of the country. So we're also looking very critically at how to deal with the, how to remove those bottlenecks and deal with some of those problems. And at the same time, ramp up food production. Dry season farming is important to us and this is one of the key ways by which we hope to address some of the problems around the food, around food production and the cost of food. So we're all indebted to the Nigerians in the diaspora commission and the Niger diaspora summit initiative who have organized this summit in the past three years with outstanding results. As an outcome of last year's summit, a committee to work on the modalities for the setting up of the Nigerian diaspora trust fund has been established and I'm told that they're working very hard. The fund is to pay for development projects and programs while guaranteeing investors in the fund attractive returns on their investment. There was also a very successful Nigeria-Saudi Arabia investment forum which brought over 50 Nigerians in Saudi Arabia who had, neither to, had no business dealings in Nigeria to come home and invest in businesses within the country. So these are also further strengthened social, cultural and economic relations between Nigeria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, there are quite a few other testimonies from small and medium scale enterprises that got investments in their businesses through their participation in last year's summit. I understand that even the Nigeria Medical Association, the NMA, took advantage of the networking opportunities that the summit provided. So we look forward to more achievements this year, especially with the coming onboard of the state diaspora focal point officers who will help in facilitating diaspora investments in their various states. So let me again commend the CEO of the Nigerians in diaspora commission, the indefatigable Mrs. BKWA Rewa and her team and all our brothers and sisters in the diaspora, many of whom of course are joining us virtually this time. And to say that the diaspora initiatives that we have and all of your efforts are certainly appreciated and will conduce to a stronger economy for Nigeria and a much, much better country. And we all look forward to being able to meet physically again, I hope, next year when I'm sure we would have somehow been able to deal with this COVID thing and we'll all be able to meet again and see each other physically. Thank you all very much and I wish you all a very great time at the summit.