The Minister of budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma has said that government has no plans to sell national assets as a panacea for the current economic recession ravaging the country. He assured that the government is working to diversify the country’s economy in the face of the recession.
Speaking to news men, Udoma frowned at the suggestion by some Nigerians like Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki that the government should sell-off capital intensive but dormant establishments in the country, Udoma said that government’s main strategy is to implement capital projects in the 2016 budget and source for funds to reflate the economy.
“Government appreciates that the down-turn in the economy has brought hardship to the people, but we are committed to redressing the situation.
“Our goal is to unlock the economic potentials of the non-oil and high-employment sectors, so as to achieve a sustainable inclusive growth that will ensure that the majority of Nigerians become more productive, thereby reducing poverty.
“Thus, we are deliberately working towards diversifying the Nigerian economy by ensuring that the non-oil sector drives the economy because this is the sector that contributes the most to GDP, and has more capacity to employ.”
The Minister said that the strategy is to reflate the economy through fiscal stimulus and strategic implementation of annual budgets, adding: “what this means is that we are geared to strategically spend our way out of recession. Unfortunately, we have not met all our planned expenditures for 2016 due to low revenue outturns.
“However, we have ensured that the resources that we release are targeted at priorities that will stimulate activities in the economy. We are also developing a more robust monitoring and evaluation framework to track performance.” [myad]
