The
Buhari administration has been lambasted over its failure to cushion
the effect of recession that has continued to cause Nigerians trouble.
President Muhammadu Buhari
Members of the House of Representatives yesterday rejected the
Federal Government’s exchange rate of N305/dollar in this year’s budget,
saying it would engender huge corruption, with the almost N500/dollar
at the parallel market, The Nation reveals.
The members who were really angry queried the Executive on the
domestic borrowing plan of the President Muhammadu Buhari
administration, saying it will stifle funds that could have been made
available to the real sector and small businesses to grow the economy
and move the country out of recession as out of N2.321 trillion
borrowing plan projected in the budget, N1.253 trillion is to be sourced
from the domestic market.
While making their observations known during an interactive session
with members of the Executive with the committees on Finance,
Appropriation, Aid Loans & Debt Management, Legislative Budget and
Research and National Planning & Economic Development on the Medium
Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) also
said the government was not doing much to reign in inflation which
presently stands at 18.55 percent.
Members in the various committees at the meeting also accused the
Federal Government of insufficient consultation with stakeholders,
especially the National Assembly while developing the MTEF, adding that
the parameters in the budget are different from that in the MTEF
initially submitted to the National Assembly.
While trying to defend the decision of the president, the Minster
of Budget & National Planning , Senator Udo Udoma, said the
government has a multi-facetted plan to move the country out of
recession.
On inflation, he said: “ It is our objective to move towards a
very low inflation environment because we need to move to a low
inflation environment so as to have sustained and sustainable growth.
“We believe that, as the Central Bank had said, many of the
things that were feeding into the inflation in 2016 is that once we can
stabilise the exchange rate and other aspects of the economy, we will
reduce the rate of inflation.
“But we need to do a lot more than that. We need to reduce the
cost of doing business and we have a number of plans to achieve that. We
need to get Nigerians back to work. We need to get single interest
loans, particularly in the key areas, such as agriculture and all that,
to get people back to work. Already the Central Bank is working on
that.”
Also speaking, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun said the government
had put a lot of measures in place to stimulate the economy. She said
people should be careful about putting their faith in the black market
as it drives inflation.
“There is a number of structural initiative to close the gap.
We have to look at why are people buying dollars at such high amounts.
It’s driven by irrational and emotional factors.”
Adeosun said the Fundamentals show that the naira should be strengthening presently. “The black market will collapse because it’s not being driven by any fundamentals,” she said.
On Treasury Single Account (TSA), the minister said it was counter
productive to put the government’s money in commercial banks only for
them to loan it back to the government at higher rates.
Mrs. Adeosun said the government was spending more on infrastructure. “We’re targeted on spending on what will bring us out of the recession,” she said.
At the session were the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National
Planning, Mines and Solid Minerals Development, Office of the Accountant
General of the Federation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), Nigerian Customs Service.
Others were Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Debt
Management Office, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Department of
Petroleum Resources (DPR).
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