By Mark Caldwel (dpa, Ap, Afp)
President
Muhammadu Buhari has been unveiling Nigeria's budget for 2016 as it
grapples with falling oil revenue and a chronic Islamist insurgency.
Buhari is aiming for growth of just above four percent.
President Muhammadu
Buhari has presented Nigeria's 2016 budget which triples investment
spending in a bid to stimulate growth while seeking to lower the
country's dependence on oil.
The budget totals 6.08 trillion naira ($30.8 billion, 28 billion euros).
The economy was in
pain from the fall in oil prices, which averaged $122 a barrel in June
2014 but was now trading at around $39, Buhari told the National
Assembly.
Nigeria relies on oil for about 90 percent of its foreign earnings and 75 percent of its budget.
"Consumption has declined at all levels," Buhari said.
He said employers
have struggled to pay salaries and meet other employee-related
obligations, both in the public and private sector. "Small business
owners and traders have been particularly hard hit by this state of
affairs," he said.
"From those who
have lost their jobs, to those young people who have never had a job, to
the people in the north-east whose families and businesses were
destroyed by insurgents, this has been a difficult time in our nation's
history," the Nigerian president said.
Spending on infrastructure
The biggest share of the budget would be invested in critical sectors such as power, housing, transport and defense.
Nigerians DW spoke
to were cautiously optimistic. "Well, it's an achievement that the
country is at least presenting a budget which will give us a picture of
what will happen next year," one man said.
"What I really look
forward to is security, real security, not temporary security," said
one woman from northeastern Nigeria, which has borne the brunt of the
Boko Haram insurgency. "I am also looking forward to seeing the end of
fluctuating electricity," she added, referring to power outages.
Previous Nigerian
budgets have tended to allocated more funds for recurrent expenditure,
such as workers and officials salaries, rather than for capital outlay.
In the 2016 budget, capital expenditure exceeds recurrent expenditure in
a bid to press ahead with urgently needed improvements to
infrastructure.
The budget foresees a deficit of 2.16 percent of GDP which would be financed by a combination of domestic and foreign borrowing.
"They are borrowing
much more than in the past and are going to carry a bigger debt
burden," Ayo Teriba, chief executive officer of Economic Associates, an
advisors firm based in Lagos, told AFP.
The budget aims for a growth rate of 4.37 percent in 2016.
The International
Monetary Fund has said that Nigeria's growth would slow to 4 percent
this year, down from 6.3 percent last year.
Buhari also renewed his anti-corruption pledge to recover stolen funds no matter how long it took, or where they were hidden.
Ben Shemang contributed to this report from Abuja.
Source: allafrica.com
No comments:
Post a Comment