The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun has said that the Federal Government spends N165 billion monthly on salaries.
Adeosun, who spoke on Tuesday, at a Town Hall/Policy Dialogue for Good Governance, organized by the Alumni Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), said that there were 1.2 million public servants in the civil service when President Muhammadu Buhari government came into power.
She said that the government has been able to save N8 billion from the monthly pay roll of public servants due to various strategies introduced to block loopholes.
The minister said that the country’s present economic challenges were not peculiar to Nigeria and that the economies of most western countries were built out of their diversity.
“Change can be extremely painful, but we must change.’’
She said that to come out of the present economic challenges, there is the need for financial discipline as well as investing in capital to attract private capital investors.
Adeosun said that the Federal Government has no choice than to borrow to invest in the country’s infrastructure, adding that this is the only way to create jobs.
“We have a very conservative borrowing programme; we will borrow conservatively so we don’t burden the future generation. We must borrow, not like in the past when loans were taken to pay salaries; we will this time, borrow to invest and build our infrastructures.’’
The meeting, which was attended by the Ministers of Agriculture and Rural Development, Power, Works and Housing, Finance, Information and Culture, Budget and National Planning and Foreign Affairs, was the sixth in the series of town hall meetings.
The ministers took time to brief the audience on what the Federal Government was doing in their various ministries to address the country`s challenges and improve the economy.
Also, traditional rulers, members of the Diplomatic Corps and Civil Society Organisations, among others, attended the meeting. [myad]
