FG needs NASS permission to reflate economy

The Federal Government needs special permission of the National Assembly to be able to truncate some inhibiting legal encumbrances in order to urgently reflate the economy. This was the position of Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun.

Speaking during a media briefing, Adeosun also said that the administration has decided to reintroduce some of the initiatives of the last administration found to be well.
She also said that as a result of the cleaning up of government’s pay roll, personnel cost has reduced by as much as N10 billion monthly through discovery of over 30,000 ghost workers and the saved amount is being used to fund recruitment of additional staff in Nigeria Police, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Railway and others.

Also, the Minister explained that the decision to release N350 billion second quarter capital vote would be made on Friday afternoon so that the fund would start to hit the spending ministries by early next week.

Adeosun equally disclosed that part of the N350 billion is an embedded N60 billion meant to finance the much expected Social Intervention.

Speaking on incessant complaints that N400 billion was said to have been released to the Ministries of Power, Defence, Interior, Transport and Agriculture since June whereas Nigerians were not feeling the effect, she blamed the procurement process, which is long and tedious.

She however, declared that procurement laws must be obeyed to the letter unless the National Assembly gives a go-ahead to the executive to bypass some of the processes.