FG to Pump N350Bn into Economy

Federal government is to inject the sum of N350 billion into the economy in the next few months, in order to stimulate it.

This was part of the resolution reached at the end of the two-day retreat of the National Economic Council (NEC) at the State House Conference Hall, Abuja, on Tuesday, innticipation of the approval of the 2016 budget.

Mrs Kemi Adeosun, minister of Finance, who briefed State House correspondents after the meeting, the money would be paid to contractors with a view to getting them to re-engage Nigerians out of jobs.

“From the Federal Ministry of Finance, in anticipation of the approval of the budget, we have virtually lined up about N350 billion which we would be pumping into the Nigerian economy in the forthcoming months.

“We explained our rationale and the processes that we have put in place and safeguards to ensure that this money actually achieves the desired objective which is to stimulate the economy.

“We are already discussing with some of the contractors who will be paid these monies and the objectives from the overall criteria is how many Nigerians would be re-engaged.

“We are specifically looking at contractors who have laid off staff and how many Nigerians are going to be put back to work as a result of this money that we are planning to release and we believe that this would bring significant economic activity.”

Joined by the chairman of Governors Forum, Abdulaziz Yari, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State and Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, she said the retreat also advised state governments to cut down on the number of political appointees, in order to shore up their internal revenue.

According to her, “state governors were encouraged where possible to rationalise numbers of commissioners and general political appointees and, in addition, cost control measures to be identified and implemented on an ongoing basis and there was a sharing of best practices from a number of states that could be applied elsewhere.”

Speaking further, the minister added that “we deliberated extensively on the drop in revenue particularly as to how it affects the state governments and their ability to pay salaries and obligations.

“The general resolve of the house and consensus was that there was the need to bring in more cost efficiency in their operations.

“In particular, to look at the setting up of the efficiency unit within the state governments, to rationalise expenditure and, of course, to increase IGR.

“To that end, there was the need to generate data because data is the basis of any revenue collecting efforts.

“The federal and state inland revenue services collaborate to do joint audits to invest in revenue, relevant technology and efforts to improve collection.

“There is the need to develop incentives for both federal and state revenue generating agencies, to ensure that there is an alignment of interest.

“There is a focus at state level on property and consumption taxes to help in improving revenue in a fair manner.

“Tax payer education must be intensified and to expand the tax base and ensure that there is a buy-in in the revenue collection agencies from the populace.”

Adeosun said the retreat resolved to get legislative approval to change UBEC counterpart funding on the part of state governments, to enable them to access N58 billion.

She said NEC believed that as it is presently, it is putting them further into debt.

She said there was the need to “reduce that requirement from a temporary period to 10 per cent from the current 50 per cent and that will release an estimated N58 billion that is currently un-accessed and it was discussed that with that money, we could possibly address around 1,000 of the worst classrooms in each of the 36 states and rehabilitate them and of course this would also create jobs and economic activity.”