According to PDP, the Buhari-led administration is just paying lip
service to the issue of diversification of the economy. The party said
this while reacting to a recent comment by the Minister of Finance, Kemi
Adeosun, that the only way Nigeria can get out of this present economic
recession is to diversify the economy and also maintain fiscal
discipline. Read the party's statement signed by its Director, New
Media, Deji Adeyanju, after the cut...
"Yesterday, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, stated that the
Muhammadu Buhari administration will focus on two policies to remove
Nigeria from recession- fiscal discipline & diversification.
Firstly, we believe a recession is not reversed by diversification. A
recession is reversed by implementing a stimulus package designed to cut
taxes, reduce the cost of doing business & boost spending on
infrastructure & other critical sectors of the economy. Available
data shows that the Buhari administration has spent a meagre 19% of the
allocation for CAPEX in #Budget2016. This sort of spending will not make
any sort of impact on the economy. Assuming but not conceding that Mrs
Adeosun is right, the challenge is the past 15 months show that despite
the glib talk the Buhari administration is doing neither. For instance,
despite claims of weeding out ghost workers from the payroll &
reducing the civil service wage bill, Nigeria’s wage bill increased from
N1.65tr in 2014 to N1.83tr and N1.71tr in 2015 & 2016 respectively.
These figures represent a combined total increase of N240bn from the
wage bill in 2014. Two days ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
released its economic report for Q2 2016 which showed that the FG
incurred a N1.09tr deficit for the quarter. This deficit was 96% higher
than the N555.49b allowed. Total expenditure for this period stood at
N1.76 trillion, surpassing the provisional quarterly budget estimate by
12.8%, representing a 58.1% increase of the Q1 expenditure.
These figures show an abject lack of fiscal discipline in the management
of the Nation’s finances by the Buhari administration. On
diversification, GDP figures released by the Nigerian Bureau of
Statistics (NBS) yesterday show that the Buhari administration is doing
significant harm to non-oil sectors of the economy. Some of those
figures include: Non oil GDP contracted by -0.38% in Q2 2016 from
-0.18% in Q1 2016 and 3.46% in Q2 2015. Furthermore, CBN figures show
that non-oil export fell by 43.2% to $576.97m in Q2 2016. As the data
shows, even sectors that experienced growth in Q2 have slowed
considerably compared to Q1 2016 & Q2 2015. As these figures show,
the Buhari administration is just paying lip service to the issue of
diversification & is in fact worsening the non-oil sectors of the
economy. These figures also show that Mrs. Adeosun’s comments about
fiscal discipline & diversification are empty rhetoric. We
reiterate our position that this government is out of depth & is
incapable of reversing the economic recession into which they have
plunged our nation. God bless Nigeria, especially in these difficult
times.
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