President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday approved N5billion for the National Identity Managment Commission (NIMC).
The approval according to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, will enable NIMC deliver the national digital economy project with appropriate infrastructures and attractive conditions of service in agencies saddled with the responsibility to do so.
Pantami made this known at the presentation of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA’s) Employee-Centric Condition and Scheme of Service documents to the public at Frasel Suites, Abuja.
He said there was an upward review of the capital budget of NIMC from between N500million and N700 million in the previous years to about N5 billion this year as part of the commitments of the President to digitalise the economy.
“We are doing our best to justify this confidence by ensuring that our initiatives support the programmes of the Government.
“The 2020 Fourth Quarter (Q4 2020) GDP Report recently released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that our modest efforts are yielding positive results; this reflected in the significant growth experienced by the ICT Sector.
“The Report indicated that the ICT sector recorded a 14.7per cent growth rate, making it the sector with the highest growth rate. The growth rate of the ICT sector was over 4 times the growth rate of the Agriculture sector, which was the sector with the second highest growth rate,” the minister said.