- Says no more Way & Means
BY COBHAM NSA – Despite the biting economic hardship in the country, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Wale Edun says President Bola Tinubu’s bold reforms are yielding positive results for the economy.
This is as the Minister also disclosed that the current administration has exited Ways and Means (borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria) within its first year in office.
However, the Minister assured that the most urgent and pressing matter of state for Mr President now is to bring down prices of food in the country.
Addressing the media on the Half Year Performance of the economy in Abuja on Thursday, the Minister said the President was concerned about the welfare of ordinary Nigerians, even as he admitted that the reform policies have created immediate difficulties for the citizens.
He said Nigerians would the better for it when the expected outcomes of the reforms begin to manifest productively, stressing that after overcoming the transparency challenges of the Cash Transfer Programme of the Social Investment initiative, the Cash Transfers had resumed with about 600,000 beneficiaries having been recently covered.
On the impact of government reforms, Edun said Nigeria now stands at a grid position globally to attract massive investments as a result of the efforts of government, adding; “I think we already can see macro economic stability. We have stable exchange rate. The budget deficits as I will show is reducing, the trade balance that measures how we are doing internationally is positive, the investment flows are positive.
“And there has been a root and branch reconfiguration of the finances of the federal government to achieve increased revenue across the board, as well as to achieve greater expenditure control.”
Also describing the removal of fuel subsidy as “technical”, Edun said there were impediments to the implementation of the recent Supreme Court judgment on direct payment federation allocations to the Local Government Councils.
Similarly, the Minister explained that the Federal Government would, in the next four weeks float a $500 million Bond to attract Diaspora Nigerians and to enable Nigerians who have funds abroad to bring their funds homes for investment.
The government’s assurances and positive assertions are coming barely six days to the planned protest by Nigerians over the current suffering and economic hardships in the country.
According to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s inflation stood at 33.25 per cent in June, while food inflation rose to an all-time-high of 40.8 per cent in the same month.
Experts and ordinary Nigerians have continued to blame the government’s economic reforms in petrol subsidy removal and floating of the Naira as the main cause of rising inflation in the country.
