The federal government of Nigeria say it has put in place the Accelerated Stabilisation and Advancement Plan, a short term measure by the president’s economic team to address challenges to the economy with focus on production and supporting businesses.
In repurposing the economy for growth and development, Minister of Finance and coordinating minister for the economy Mr Wale Edun disclosed that ongoing reforms through the plan will focus on driving investments in agriculture, oil and gas as well as power with a target of ramping up supply to 6,000mw.
The minister who was speaking at a quarterly media briefing in Abuja gave an overview of the performance of the economy in the first half of the year and said Government has technically exited ways and means borrowing. He added that lenders like the World Bank, African Development bank (AfDB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have given Nigeria concessional funding by as much as 40 years in some instances, emphasizing that the nation’s debt threshold is safe.
On Social Investment Programme, Mr Edun said direct transfers geared towards 15 million households have been reconfigured and Nigeria now we has a gold standard using the National Identification Number (NIN) and the Biometric Verification Number (BVN); adding that 600,000 payments were made recently and the ultimate target is to reach 75 million vulnerable Nigerians.
Performance to expect according to the minister is a GDP improvement driven by faithful implementation of the Accelerated Stabilisation and Advancement Plan, inflation slowdown to 20%, reducing total debt stock to 95bn dollars, and slowing budget deficit 4% before the end of the year.
The supreme court recently declared that it is unconstitutional for state governors to hold funds allocated for local government administrations.The seven-man panel, in the judgment delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, declared that the 774 local government councils in the country should manage their funds by themselves.They also held that the power of the government is portioned into three arms of government namely the federal, the state and the local government.The court declared that state governments have no power to appoint caretaker committees and a local government council is only recognisable with a democratically elected government.
When asked on the status of payments to local government councils, Mr Edun said funds are not technically going directly to the Local government councils right now but a Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) committee has been set up to look at the practicality of the supreme Court’s decision and advise accordingly.
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