Ahmed: FG Huge Debt Accumulation Deliberate * Youth Corps members to benefit from N30, 000 minimum wage
Total public debt stood at N24.387 trillion as at December
2018, out of which the by federal government alone accounts for over N19
trillion.
The minister, who addressed a press conference in Abuja on Thursday
alongside heads of agencies under her ministry, said the debt increase from N12.2trillion in to
over N24 trillion "is by design."
According to her, "we have designed the ERGP (Economic
Recovery and Growth Plan) to reflate the economy to take us out of recession.
"When we came on board and we made an assessment it was clear that our
country was going into recession. When we did a research on the best way to
reverse the recession was to reflate the economy and that means putting
resources in the economy so that consumption will increase," the minister
said.
According to her, the government designed the ERGP to borrow
in the first, second and third years, adding that in the fourth year borrowing
was supposed to start reducing.
"That is exactly what we have done. We made sure that
we borrowed to finance capital projects," she said.
The minister argued that at the same time Nigeria slipped
into recession, there were other
countries in similar situation, stressing that some of them are still not out
of recession, "because of the
method we adopted."
Ahmed stated that the consequence of the method adopted by
Nigeria to exit recession was the increase in debt, adding that that this was
why her ministry and all its agencies are working towards increasing revenues.
In response to a question on whether she was nursing some
fears in view of the high revenue projection in the 2019 budget in spite of the
revenue generation challenges, she responded in the affirmative.
The 2019 budget is predicted on a revenue projection of N6.9
trillion
Over N7 trillion was projected for 2018, out of which less
than N4 trillion was realised.
"Yes, but fear is also a positive motivator and most of
what we are doing in the ministry of finance is driving revenues.
"The revenues in 2019 is faring better than what we've
done in 2018
and I don't want that fear to go away because that can make
us lose our momentum," she stated.
The minister noted that the oil production level still
stands at an average 1.95 million barrels per day (mbpd), less than the 2.3
million mbpd benchmarked in the budget.
Ahmed disclosed that at some point, it moved to 2.1 mbpd as
Egina came on stream in November 2018 with a capacity to produce between150,000
to 200,000 barrels per day.
While production has not reached budgeted the 2.3mbpd, the
minister expressed relief that crude oil
price sales at an average of $71 per barrel "is helping us to balance the
shortfall because our budget was cut out at $60 per barrel."
On the new National Minimum Wage, the minister said
financial implications had been worked out by the presidential committee that
was set up, with the report already submitted to the president.
"We have looked at the report and what we are working
on now is how we can finance the new minimum wage.
"Apart from the increase of the minimum wage from
N18,000 to N30,000 there is also consequential adjustment that we have to
negotiate with the labour unions. "Two days ago, the SGF announced the
constitution of the committee that will do this negotiation," she said.
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