440. The structural reforms concentrate on reversing the poor domestic investment climate, strengthening the weak and fragmented banking subsector, and reengineering the nation’s complex and often incoherent trade policies. These reforms will be achieved by: dismantling unnecessary regulatory barriers and red tape, thereby reducing the unwarranted costs of private-sector transactions; embarking on a comprehensive bank consolidation programme; reducing tariff barriers and rationalising tariffs by adopting the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Common External Tariff (CET); and streamlining the role of the state by strategically privatising and outsourcing noncore state functions and institutions. 441. The Yar’Adua administration built on the initiatives of the Obasanjo regime and designed NEEDS II (2008–2011). The programme revolves around the administration’s seven-point agenda for economic development, which President Yar’Adua unveiled at his inaugural speech on assuming office on 29 May 2007 in the hope that it will put the economy back on track. The agenda focuses, inter alia, on: • Ensuring adequate power supplies for the modern economy. • Ensuring food security by revolutionising the agricultural sector, thereby increasing yield and production by five to 10 times. • Creating wealth by diversifying production in agriculture and the solidminerals sector. • Developing the transport sector by restoring and modernising railways and roads. • Land reforms by releasing land for commercial farming and other large-scale business. • Increasing security by improving physical policing, military security and honest dialogue between the people and the government. • Improving education through a massive financial injection into the education sector so as to ensure minimum acceptable international standards of education and skills training in science and technology for future innovators and industrialists. 442. There are tangible signs that these initiatives are yielding positive results, particularly in their impact on growth and macroeconomic stability. Inflation is in single digits and is declining (5.9 per cent in 2007 compared to 8.5 per cent in 2006). Foreign reserves have increased substantially and are equivalent to the cover on 12 months’ imports. Economic growth is increasing, although it is still short of the 7 per cent required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The incidence of poverty has also declined from 65.6 per cent in 1996 to 53.4 per cent in 2004. 443. Furthermore, external and domestic debt have both declined, thereby reducing debt service claims on the budget. Debt relief, coupled with using oil profits to repay external debt, has reduced external debt substantially. The US$750 million fiscal space created by debt relief has been allocated to 143