FG to spend more on infrastructure this year - Minister of Finance

Mrs. Kemi Adeosun:

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun has said the federal government plans to boost agricultural production and spend billions of dollars upgrading dilapidated infrastructure that will help drag Africa’s top oil producer out of recession this year.
The crash in oil price has put most West African nation into its worst economic crisis in 25 years with output, contracting by 1.5 per cent last year.

The situation was escalated by militant attacks on pipelines in the oil-rich Niger Delta and what business executives said have been poor policy decisions.

Adeosun revealed that she expect growth to pick up to 1 per cent this year on the back of improved crude prices and government spending on power and rail projects, with $6.9 billion earmarked for infrastructure projects.

The executive arm is also seeking approval from lawmakers to borrow nearly $6 billion from the Export-Import Bank of China to upgrade the rail network linking Lagos, the commercial capital, and Kano, the largest city in the north.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting growth of 0.8 per cent this year.

“We’re confident this will be a year of recovery. Modest, slow recovery, but we hope we will get out of negative growth by the second quarter,” Adeosun said.

The government made similar pledges last year to invest in infrastructure to create jobs and drive growth, but spent less than a third of the N1.8 trillion ($5.9bn) budgeted for capital projects.

That was blamed on funding shortfalls and delays caused by the late passage of the budget.

Adeosun insisted this year will be different. “We haven’t taken a scattergun approach, we’re focusing on rail and we want to do it sensibly and sustainably,” she said.

Adeosun said the government was committed to raising revenue by improving tax collection and cutting wasteful spending, saying it had culled 58,000 ghost workers on the state’s payroll last year.

“As a people and as a government, we’re chastened by what happened last year,” she said.