Nigeria to inject $15b in ailing economy

The Nigerian government on Tuesday said it was working on a plan to generate and inject large amount of funds, principally in foreign currency, estimated at 10 to 15 billion U.S. dollars into the economy.

In a statement made available to Xinhua in Lagos, Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, said the government has also designed a fiscal stimulus strategy that will help the country to come out of its economic recession.

Udoma said that the Economic Management Team had been working on a plan to generate an immediate large injection of funds into the economy.

The minister said the funds would be generated through Asset Sales, Advance Payment for Licence renewals, infrastructure concessioning, use of recovered funds, among others, to bridge the funding gap.

"To achieve this speedily, we will need to fast-track procedures through Presidential directives and legislation; a bill is almost ready for submission to National Assembly," he added.

The minister emphasized the need for the country to spend its way out of recession through injection of large amount of money into the economy.

According to him, the failure to diversify the economy and implement the national goals due to lack of discipline in the past had made the country witness negative growth.

He said the government had put measures in place to diversify the economy.

He said some of the measures included " tackling challenges inhibiting private sector participation in the upstream petroleum sector and building on the petroleum products deregulation.

This, the minister added will boost agricultural production for food sufficiency, as food imports has the third highest demand for forex.

The minister said another measure was growing non-oil exports in the light of competitive and comparative advantage created by devaluation following the introduction of a market reflective exchange rate.

Nigeria's economy formally entered recession in the third quarter of the year when its Gross Domestic Product in real terms declined by 2.06 percent in the second quarter year on year.

Source : XINHUA