Nigerian economy on firm recovery drive – Finance Commissioners Forum chair

.Urges FG to release 2nd tranche of Paris Club Refund

The chairman of Nigeria Finance Commissioners Forum, Mr. Mahmoud Sali Yunusa, has said that the Nigerian economy would certainly exit recession by the third quarter of 2017 plus or minus.

Yunusa, who is also the Adamawa State Commissioner of Finance, reaffirmed this in an exclusive interview with The Daily Times in Abuja, saying that latest indices have shown that the Nigerian economy is on firm recovery drive.

According to him, the release of the second tranche of the Paris Club Refund will enable the state governments to offset salaries arrears and pensions.

The outspoken economist explained that if the Federal Government can expedite the release and distribution of the second tranche of the fund, it would also boost economic activities in the various states and place the economy back on positive growth.

He noted that part of the reason the country dipped into recession was because past administration embarked on frivolous projects that do not have direct impact on the lives of the citizenry.

The Chairman of Finance Commissioner Forum recalled that the recession that Nigeria found herself in did not just start in 2015, but long before now.

His words: “We kept on experiencing negative growth in our GDP but no charismatic or pragmatic approach was taken to forestall the situation and prevent the country from slipping into recession until it entered into negative growth.

“But looking at the global oil prices and the stability that we have gained in the oil producing areas and the figures, certainly we have hope. Technically, it is projected that Nigeria will be out of recession by fourth quarter, plus or minus.

“Again if you look at it critically, the economy is on firm recovery drive, it’s on firm recovery pace. What Nigerians should do is to be patient and the government needs to look at funding the power sector to propel the economy. Government needs to fund the agriculture and most importantly the Federal Government needs to look at the funding structure of states because the components of the states make up the Federal Government.”

He warned that if the state governments cannot pay salary, then there would chaos and it could affect the Federal Government directly.

The economist said the Federal Government should look at how to resuscitate the states and save them from financial decline.

Yunusa however advised state governments to look inward and see the potentials that they have which hitherto they have not taken the advantages of such opportunities to generate revenue.

“For example, states must give attention to adequate generation of internally generated revenue which would further complement whatever shortfall that may arise from the Federal Government. We should be able to augment such gap. At the same time, states need to be very careful now in their expenditure.”

“They need to slow down in capital expenditure, they need to short down white elephant projects that would not add immediate value to the people and they need to concentrate on recurrent expenditure especially salary payment must not stop no matter what.”

“Above all, they must also imbibe saving culture because no one can predict precisely what the revenue flow would be in the future because all we that we are talking about are projections and not realities.”

“Reality happens on that day; on the day of reckoning, so we need to be very careful in states. The finance commissioners in the states are saddled with the responsibility to advice their principals financially.”

The outspoken economist further called on the need to cut a lot of costs, and avoid embarking on white elephant projects.

“The states must make sure that all expenditures has to be extremely necessary and extremely needed to be incurred before they are incurred,” he added.