The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, on Tuesday explained that the Federal Government opted for a conservative borrowing plan to fund the critical sectors of the economy and to ensure that future generation is not saddled with the burden of debt payment.

The minister, who described borrowing as inevitable in view of the current realities in the nation’s economy, spoke at a town hall meeting/policy dialogue for good governance organised in Abuja by the Alumni Association of the National Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.

Other ministers at the event included those of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed; Solid Minerals, Kayode Fayemi; Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola; Environment, Amina J. Mohammed; Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, Health Prof. Isaac Folorunso Adewole, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama.

Stressing the urgent need to fund infrastructure, Adeosun said: “We have to invest in our infrastructure to allow the private sector to thrive which will create jobs and unlock the economy.

We have to adopt a very conservative borrowing programme but we must borrow because for us to do rail, we need funds with other needed infrastructure we need funds.”

The minister pointed out that some of the existing rail lines in Nigeria were constructed during the colonial era, which has to be massively upgraded and brought into the 21st century.

According to her, such investment will trickle down to the people through its impacts on agriculture, rail and solid minerals.

She stated: “The rail we have now was done in the colonial era. There was no significant upgrade. We need to urgently do rail for agriculture and solid minerals to be competitive, so I really don’t see any option than to borrow but we will borrow sustainably; we will borrow conservatively to make sure we don’t burden future generation.

“In the past, Nigeria had been borrowing to pay salaries but now we are borrowing to invest. When you borrow to invest, there is an expectation that there will be additional revenue that will service those borrowings.

“We will borrow as cheaply as possible and that is why we are approaching the World Bank and Export Credit Agencies to provide concessionary loans. We are taking concessionary loans before going for commercial loans.”

Speaking about the nature of the public service inherited by the current administration, Adeosun stated: “We inherited 1.2 million public servants with a wage bill of N165 billion per month. You can’t send people away. What we can do is to build controls to make sure these people exist and are validly working to earn their wages which is why we are carrying out continuous audit which has revived our huge bills by N6 billion per month.”

The minister said she believes time had come to focus on capital funding. She said: “We had to attack the problem of recurrent expenditure. When we came in, over N165 billion went on salary. As we speak, we have reduced it to N159 billion.”

•Photo shows Kemi Adeosun.

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