 session with the Vice-President of Nigeria, Yemi Oshin Bajal. We're going to start with an indication of where the Nigerian economy is right now, given the fact that we are striving for inclusive growth, and that's not just an African agenda. It's a global agenda. So let me hand it to you. Just give us a synopsis of where we are right now. First, thank you very much, and thank you everyone for coming. I want to say first that I'm sure that most of us already know the background to where we are in Nigeria and why we are where we are. I think the most important narrative today is what our plans are to get out of the recession. We have a Nigeria economic recovery and growth plan, which is a four-year, medium-term plan which first addresses the question of getting us out of the recession, and then of course how to go on the path of sustainable growth. The most important aspects of that plan are macroeconomic stability, diversification of our economy, and a very robust social investment scheme. Now, just to go from the social investment scheme, because that speaks to the question of inclusion. The social investment scheme is peculiar in the sense that it's not a social safety net in the traditional way. This is one where we are actually looking to develop capacity, especially in the young people. So a lot of the investment actually goes into the development of capacity at the level of very young people. So we have a scheme which is called EMPAR, a 500,000 young graduates have been engaged, have been employed, it's a volunteer core program, but they have been engaged to be teachers in primary schools, to be public health officials, as well as extension workers for the farms. But more importantly is the training that goes with that. Each of them will be trained, each of them will be armed with a device which enables them to be trained in a wide variety of areas, especially technology training, even writing codes and training on an ongoing basis and improving their capacity. Mr. Vice President, key to that social development plan will be macroeconomic stability, as you mentioned, and also diversification of the economy. Let's talk a bit about the macroeconomic stability, because at the moment investors are a little concerned. You're excited though, because the opportunity of 180 million-plus consumers in Nigeria is incredibly appealing to anybody wanting to make money in a low-growth environment. So can you assure investors that this economic growth and recovery plan is going to lead to macroeconomic stability? Absolutely. And I think that most investors in Nigeria, most who see the investment coming to Nigeria, are really quite bullish, and I believe that many of them see what the immediate prospects are. If you look at the macroeconomic environment, and one of the reasons why, in our earlier discussion this morning, I was pointing out that once you understand why you are where you are, and for investors they're smart, they understand it. I mean it's not a structural problem, as someone pointed out. For instance, look at foreign exchange availability, it's a supply issue. We know why we don't have as much foreign exchange as we ought to have. And a lot of that has to do with the problems of oil production, which was of course affected by the insurgency in the Niger Delta and all of that. We're resolving that. Once that is resolved, obviously more dollars come into the market. When we have more dollars, those who are looking to import are able to import even more. But just going beyond that, also effecting the foreign exchange policy which we have, and carrying that policy to its logical conclusion, ensuring that it enables some ... Look at cement, which is a big opportunity in my work, which is a big industrial activity in Nigeria. They also make dollars from exports and all of that. Now there are those who are manufacturing, but they're importing 85% and over. Now that's a slightly more difficult problem, and where you have that kind of large importation, you obviously are going to have problems unless you invest locally. And that's why we're also trying to direct attention to local investment. People simply have to invest locally. We're investing 50 billion in export processing zones this year alone. Those export processing zones are supposed to create an opportunity for investors to invest locally and draw from local resources. So this is an opportunity for the investor. I mean, we're not going to ... I mean, it's okay with investors. I don't want to dwell on foreign exchange, but there's just one other statement that you made recently, and that is that we need to see the gap closing between the official and the parallel market, which that gap sitting at about 60% at the moment. When is that going to happen? Can you give a timing? Well, it's difficult to give a timing about currency movements and all of that, as you probably imagine. What it is really is what is the policy that's going to lead to that? We already have a foreign exchange policy. Now that policy, and that's the point I've been making all along, that stabilizing that policy and showing that that policy works fully is really what we're trying to get in our interactions with the central bank, which of course is independent, is we're trying to get them to see that you need to implement this policy fully. So no bank, of course, has its own constraints. They're saying, hey look, we have to be careful. We simply can't allow the currency to float. We have to look at all of the market conditions and all of that. But really, the point we are making is that we must create the environment which will help the central bank as well. That will come from an increasing supply of dollars from oil exportation. Once we have more dollars, central bank obviously has more confidence in floating the currency. So a lot of these is... Take your point. Let's come back to that oil production. You need to average over two million barrels a day to basically make your production targets for the year. Yes. With the situation resolved, are you going to be able to meet those production targets? Because this is the money that you're talking about. You're not going to have to revise the numbers downwards. Has anything fundamentally changed in the production cycle? Yes. I think we'll be able to do possibly even over 2.2 million barrels a day as you were able to resolve all of these problems and we expect that we will be able to resolve the problems. What has also happened, of course, is that we used to have cash call difficulties. I mean, in the past, with our joint venture partners, there were issues of government paying its own portion of the cash calls. Now that has been resolved with the major IOCs. We now have a self-financing regime which allows for cost recovery so that we're not going to have to be putting forward all of these cash calls. We're also paying the backlog in debts and all of that, about 5.1 billion. And we're doing that by increasing production. What the IOCs are meant to do is to increase their production in order to pay for that backlog. So we think that we have a regime now, we have a financing arrangement that allows the market, you know, that allows all production. So you're holding the average, the 2.2 million barrels a day. We're reasonably confident that we will. Let's talk about the turnaround plan for the power sector specifically. The World Bank has given you their commitment. They met with the federal government end of last year. They've given you their commitment to work together to create a turnaround. Again, can you give me a little visibility on the steps that are going to be made in the power sector, specifically because privatisation of the Nigerian power sector has been underway for three years and now obviously it's stalled, given the environment? Maybe a bit longer than three years, actually. But the two issues, one is the very great thing that the World Bank is working with us. And in particular, the World Bank is working on actually the market, which really is a problem. You know, the market and the liquidity in the market is really where the challenges are, aside from the other issues. But I think that the main issue is creating a market that is self-sustaining and I think that's where the World Bank comes in. Because you have a situation where you are producing this much power but it must be sold and it must be paid for. Those who are buying must pay for it. You must pay for gas. Now ensuring that that market is resourced, ensuring that that liquidity is there, is really where the World Bank comes in and where we're working with the World Bank. So if we're able to resolve the liquidity issues, which is important, of course, the other problems are problems of generation transmission, especially transmission. Transmission was about 5,000 MHz capacity and that's for the grid. And we've now moved that up, we've increased that in terms of its simulation to about 6,500 MHz and up to even 7,200 MHz at the end of last year in terms of just the capacity for transmission, which is very crucial. But I think the most important thing is how some of the... Don't forget that this is a privatized environment and the generation and distribution are privatized. But when you privatize, of course, you expect that there will be further investments by the private sector players. A lot of the private sector players, especially the distribution companies, are highly leveraged. So there's a need for them, of course, to find fresh capital to be able to invest in metering. For example, just metering, so that they can collect their money and all of that, they can collect their type invoices and all that. That's an area where we need to do a lot of work, trying to get money into the system and we believe the World Bank partnership is going to help a good deal in that respect. At the beginning of our conversation, you spoke about the importance of macroeconomic stability, diversification and social inclusion. So let's touch on this diversification because we spent a lot of time on the power of the oil and gas environment. Agriculture is enormous for Nigeria and potentially Nigeria can become the bread basket of Africa. Where are we on that plan? Or if you prefer to choose a different sector that you more diversified into, I'm open to that discussion. Yeah, agriculture is crucial and we're being a great deal of attention to agriculture. Smart of Africa agriculture is possibly the second largest contributor to our GDP. So it's big for us. Now, what we're planning to do in agriculture and what we're doing in agriculture is first we intend to be completely self-sufficient in rice production, in tomato, in wheat and in rice, just take rice for example. Rice is an important commodity for us. There's a lot of demand for rice. But more importantly, there's also a lot of foreign exchange being spent on rice importation. Exactly, you import a great deal of rice. But now with the work that we're doing in growing rice, especially in KB state, in Sokoto state, Jigawa state, in the northern rice belt, as well as in a boy state in the southeast, we're seeing that there's a great deal more activity in that sector. For example, at KB state, which is in the north, and Lagos state, just came together to do just over Christmas, KB state produces large amounts of rice. And they supplied Lagos state with the rice and they were able to work together to produce several thousand bags of rice which were sold over the Christmas on an experimental basis. And we actually saw price of rice dropping in the markets. So those kinds of collaborations are important. But the more important narrative is that we're producing the rice aggressively and that we're able to produce larger acreage of rice because we have the right siblings, we're irrigating, and we're financing that sector. There's what is called the Angkor Boros program, and we're financing rice. So rice is big. Also tomatoes. We've got about a minute left. So beyond agriculture, you've got oil and gas manufacturing. Obviously cement production from the Dungote industries. Just a final question. Let's come back to the economic turnaround plan. Yes. Is it documented? Can people go in, survey it, and basically look at the timelines that you've put in place? We'll formally launch the four-year economic recovery and growth plan in mid-February. We've already written it out, and many parts of it were discussing, the outlines of it were discussing, but it will be formally launched as a document in the middle of February. But our current 2017 budget is actually based on the economic recovery and growth plan. By the way, we had a strategic implementation plan, which we started with in 2016. And the economic recovery and growth plan is actually a development of that strategic implementation plan. So if you look at the strategic implementation plan, you're able to see the general direction in which you are going. But the full document is to be launched in February of this year, which is next month. Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for joining me for this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, Yemi Osenbajo, the Vice President of Nigeria. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.