The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, on Tuesday, August 9,revealed that the Federal Government now expends a whooping N159 billion monthly on salaries.
Adeosun, who spoke at a Town Hall/Policy Dialogue for Good Governance organised by the Alumni Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, yesterday, said the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari inherited a monthly wage bill of N165 billion and 1.2 million public servants in the civil service, when the government came into power, but has now been reduced to N159 billion.
“You can’t send people away. What we can do is to build controls to make sure these people exist and are validly working to earn their wages which is why we are carrying out continuous audit which has reduced our huge bills by N6 billion per month. We had to attack the problem of recurrent expenditure. When we came in, over N165 billion went on salary. As we speak, we have reduced it to N159 billion,”she said
The minister, who described borrowing as inevitable in view of the current realities in the nation’s economy, explained that the Federal Government opted for a conservative borrowing plan to fund the critical sectors of the economy and to ensure that future generation is not saddled with the burden of debt payment.
‘‘In the past, Nigeria had been borrowing to pay salaries but now we are borrowing to invest. When you borrow to invest, there is an expectation that there will be additional revenue that will service those borrowings,’’ she stated.
Adeosun, who stressed the urgent need to fund infrastructure,said: “We have to invest in our infrastructure to allow the private sector to thrive which will create jobs and unlock the economy. We have to adopt a very conservative borrowing programme but we must borrow because for us to do rail, we need funds with other needed infrastructure we need funds.”
The Minister pointed out that some of the existing rail lines in Nigeria were constructed during the colonial era, which has to be massively upgraded and brought into the 21st century. According to her, such investment will trickle down to the people through its impacts on agriculture, rail and solid minerals.
She said: “The rail we have now was done in the colonial era. There was no significant upgrade. We need to urgently do rail for agriculture and solid minerals to be competitive, so I really don’t see any option than to borrow but we will borrow sustainably; we will borrow conservatively to make sure we don’t burden future generation.
Adeosun said FG will borrow as cheaply as possible and that is why the World Bank and Export Credit Agencies are being approached to provide concessionary loans.
