Premium Times reports that the minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun confirmed at a media briefing in Abuja on Friday, September 16 that the monies were released since May when the 2016 fiscal appropriation was passed.
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She said the Federal Government has put measures in place to bring the economy back on its feet. That will also generate some economic activity in a lot of our local governments with women and maybe men cooking for the children. “We want to make sure that this recession is the shortest possible”.
“The economy has to be more resilient than that so that we do not find ourselves back where we are”, she said.
“We are about to appoint our advisers”.
She listed the sector which funds had been committed include, Power and Housing; defense, to rebuilt the capability of the army to continue with the effort in the North East, interior; transport; agriculture, saying, “we need to increase production now that food prices is going up”. We are raising money. We have approved that plan from World Bank, from AfDB with interest rates as low as 1 per cent and tenor as long as 40 years.
She also said that N50 billion was set monthly as budget support plan for some state governments from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to support them with additional money to enable them to pay salaries. We are working with the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) to see how to fast track the process of contracts so the delays could be removed, so that monies could trickle down into the pockets of Nigerians. “We are monitoring because one of the condition of the loan is that they meet certain conditions and we are now sending monitoring evaluation to go and check they are doing what they actually agreed on”.
“We are confident that the plan we put together will work”.
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The problem we have is that numerous things that people are spending money on are the things government should be doing like roads, power and so on. “The YouWin programme is one of such, which is now being restructured”.
