Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, while explaining the government’s economic plans at a two-day public forum organised by a national newspaper in Lagos, said the 2016 budget would stimulate the economy and not impose any undue austerity on the people.
The VP said, contrary to the fear of many, “this year’s budget will stimulate the economy rather than impose undue austerity on the citizens.”
He lamented that, it was pathetic for a nation as big as Nigeria to bench mark its budget on the price of one commodity – oil, pointing out that other sources must also be explored to move the nation forward.
“It is pathetic that a nation with over 170 million people bench marked its budget on the price of oil. We must look beyond oil because it disturbs us from looking at other sectors. In order, to move the country forward, we must reduce the Federal Government’s and States’ dependence on sharing revenue made from oil sales,” the VP said.
Osinbajo at the forum assured Nigerians that all the ongoing reforms in various sectors pointed to a fact that the situation would soon change.
He said, “the foundation for a strong economy demands that we have appropriate fiscal policies that will help the country arising from a very low rate of VAT and a low taxpayer’s base. We are focusing on increasing the country’s taxpayers’ base.”
Adding that, “we are committed to expanding the tax net,” for instance, 30 per cent of the country’s budget has been earmarked for capital expenditure”, and “Non-oil sources, comprising company income tax, VAT and others, are expected to contribute N1.5 trillion, which is more than the estimated revenue from oil”.
“This is unprecedented in the history of the country”, he told the gathering at the forum.
Giving insights into what the present administration was doing on various segment of the economy, Osinbajo declared that the privatisation exercise in the power sector would not be reversed because government has never been known to be good manager of business.
According to him, what happened to the former national telecommunication firm NITEL and the defunct Nigeria Airways were enough examples to prove that government should not be directly involved in running businesses.
He said, government would sustain the privatisation of the power sector and continue its push for the provision of gas to power the existing generating plants.
Nigeria, according to him has in excess of 12,000 Megawatts of installed generating capacity, but it has just about the chance of wheeling only about 5,000 Megawatts. He noted that much investment would be required to provide the transmission infrastructure to transport the excess to the end users.
“Even if we transmit the 5,000 megawatts currently generated, over half of it will be lost because of inadequate infrastructure,” the Vice President said.
He sympathised with Nigerians on the lingering fuel scarcity, explaining that the government was pushing for co-location of refineries to the existing ones to increase refining capacity.
The building of railway lines would be intensified to increase volume movement of goods, particularly petroleum products at reduced cost, he added.
Osinbajo revealed that, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Benin-Ore road were among the 33 roads government has scheduled for completion and would not consider starting new ones for now.
He revealed that government was also in the process of completing the Abuja – Kaduna rail line, while the Lagos – Kano rail and the Lagos – Calabar rail axis were top priority projects.
The two day first National Economic Forum organised by The Nation’s newspaper in Lagos would be concluded today.
