Federal Government, in anticipation of the approval of the budget, has announced that it is set to pump about N350 billion into the economy in few months in other to revamp it.
This was part of the decisions reached at the end of the two-day National Economic Council Retreat on the economy at State House Conference Centre, Abuja. The monies, which would come from the Finance ministry, would be spent mostly on capital projects like infrastructures with job creation capacities to put Nigerians back to work. This would include construction companies that have laid off staff. The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, who briefed alongside governors of Zamfara, Anambra and the National Planning Minister, said the two-day retreat deliberated extensively on the drop in revenue particularly as to how it affects the state government and their ability to pay salaries and obligations.
She said her ministry explained the rationale behind the pumping of the N350 billion into the economy at the retreat. Adeosun said, “We explained our rationale and the processes that we have put in place, safe guards 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 you going to 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. According to Adeosun, “the general resolve of the house and consensus was that there was a 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 Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
“To that end there was a need to generate data because data is the basis of any revenue collecting efforts. “The Federal and state inland revenue services collaborate to do join audits to invest in revenue, relevant technology and efforts to improve collection. “There is a 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”. The Finance Minister said the retreat also encouraged state governors to rationalize numbers of commissioners and general political appointees where possible and in addition cost control measures to be identified and implemented on an on-going basis, as well as sharing of best practices from a number of states that could be applied elsewhere.
NEC also discussed the need to review the counterpart funding needed to access the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) fund from 50 percent to 10 percent. The states currently need to have a counterpart fund of 50 percent to access the fund, if reviewed it would become a 10 and 90 percent contribution. According to the minister, this will release an estimate “58 billion Naira 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 ofcourse this would also create jobs and economic activity”.
Discussions also included the need to get a “legislative approval to change the need for counterpart funding on the part of state governments which we feel is putting them further into debt, to reduce that requirement from a temporary period to 10% from the
current 50 percent”. Other resolutions include the resolve to work together to resolve the challenges of the economy.
Resolve to look for alternative sources, to concentrate to revamp the agriculture sector. The NEC also resolved to be self sufficient in tomatoes paste production by the end of the year, to be self-sufficient in rice production by 2018 and wheat production by 2019.
Each state government was encouraged to identify two crops they have comparative advantage in among other critical decisions.
MetroWatchOnline
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