How Buhari plans to stop borrowing to fund national budget – Minister, Udo Udoma

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma has explained how President Muhammadu Buhari plans to stop relying on borrowing to fund capital projects captured in the national budget.

According to him, concerted efforts are in place to broaden Nigeria’s non-oil revenues and optimize government spending.

Udoma made this known  at a Stakeholders’ Dialogue on the Implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) in Abuja.

He said the immediate focus of President Buhari is on revenue enhancement. According to him, Buhari’s government “must improve its revenue base so that we do not continue to rely on borrowing to fund our capital budgets.

“Revenue mobilization is therefore our number one priority.“Our revenue mobilization efforts will involve, amongst other things, introducing measures to increase the independent revenues from our revenue generating agencies.“We will also cut out waste by intensifying our current efforts to plug revenue leakages and inefficiencies in government spending.

“The government has also committed itself to exploring options to generate additional revenues by the restructuring and privatisation of carefully selected public enterprises.“But, most importantly, the ERGP states that we will be taking measures to expand our tax to GDP ratio from the current 6% of GDP to at least 15% of GDP. We are already working on these tax review initiatives.

However, it would be recalled that the minister had earlier maintained that the federal government was not planning to increase taxes. 

Meanwhile, Udoma further stated at the event that the ERGP indicates that to achieve sustained growth, the country will continue its current initiatives aimed at driving fiscal stimulus through a package of spending to stimulate private consumption and investments by businesses.

“This is why our 2017 Budget proposal has dedicated 30% of the Budget to capital expenditure. We intend to achieve a minimum capital expenditure allocation of 30% in subsequent Budgets throughout the life of the Plan,” he said.