Sunday 18092016

SUNDAY VANGUARD, SEPTEMBER 18, 2016, PAGE 7
RECESSION
Buhari’s
new thinking
•20
2017 Budget t to focus on inclusive growth
•Udoma, Adeosun speak on way out
•Obadiah Mailafia, ia, Bode Augustus, Ayo Teriba, Bismarck
Rewane suggest stimulus package to revive economy
By Soni Daniel,
Northern Region Editor
Nigeria can be likened to
the prodigal son, who
grabbed much of his rich
father’s assets and went to what the
Bible described as a ‘far country’
and squandered the wealth with
women of easy virtue and returned
home a wretched man, bemoaning
his fate. But the good thing about
the prodigal son is that he quickly
realised his mistake, returned to his
father, who pardoned him for his
recklessness and restored him with
full rights to his sonship.
President Muhammadu Buhari
may not be an astute or a celebrated
economist like Thomas Sowell,
Joseph Stiglitz or Adam Smith, to
dish out theories on fiscal and
monetary policies, but with
experience, he knows when an
economy is in serious trouble. And it
has been a baffling coincidence that
while as head of state between 1984
and 1985, and now as a civilian
president, Buhari has had to contend
with a deflated economy, which may
take a long time to rejig. To worsen
matters for him and his team, the
citizens are seriously upset, because
they cannot readily understand why
the economy, which was recently
‘rebased’ and branded as the ‘largest
in Africa and only 26th globally by
the previous administration, could
have inexplicably nose-dived into a
recession with a double-digit
inflation and massive job cuts as well
as firms closing shop.
Indeed, the outlook is scary,
sending shockwaves across the
nation and abroad, effectively
dethroning Nigeria from its enviable
position as the largest economy and
watching in low self esteem as South
Africa takes over from the ‘giant of
Africa’.
But the good news is that Buhari
has been humble and
straightforward enough with
Nigerians to admit that the economy
is in a very bad shape and that it
requires urgent surgical operation.
C ntrived positive economic
indices to show that the economy is
doing very well will not work and
President Buhari has reportedly
rejected that. Even the suggestion
in some quarters that massive
imports to meet the daily needs of
the people so as to be seen as
•President Buhari
‘politically correct’ has been rejected.
Nigeria, like other major oil producing
counties like Venezuela, Canada, Iran,
Algeria, Ecuador, Brazil, Iraq, Russia,
Libya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan are also
in recession while others like: Qatar,
Mexico, UAE, China, Angola and Saudi
Arabia, according to the June/July edition
of Worldatlas, Bloomberg, are at the
brink of recession.
This has come about as a result of the
continuous decline in oil price for close
to two years. From a steady $110 per
barrel before 2013, oil price has dropped
to as low as $30 per barrel since 2014
but is barely moving towards $50 per
barrel, leaving oil-dependent nations
with little or no cash to run their economy.
Perhaps, as a practical demonstration
of the political will and determination to
find answers to the beleagued economy,
Buhari sat down with his ministers and
top government officials for most part of
Thursday, September 15, 2016, to
holistically examine the economy and
proffer solutions that could effectively
bail the nation out of recession.
The session came on a one-day retreat
tagged: “Building Inter-ministerial
Synergy for Effective Planning and
Budgeting in Nigeria”.
Declaring open the retreat, President
Muhammadu Buhari said that the nation
requires what he calls ‘out-of-the-box’
thinking so as to get out of the economic
doldrums.
Buhari said, “The challenges we face
in the current recession require ‘out-ofthe-box’
thinking, to deploy strategies that
involve engaging meaningfully with the
private sector, to raise the level of private
sector investment in the economy as a
whole.
We are confident that
the level of private
investment will grow
as we are determined
to make it easier to
do business in
Nigeria by the
reforms we are
introducing under
the auspices of the
Presidential
Committee on Ease
of Doing Business
“We are confident that the level of
private investment will grow as we are
determined to make it easier to do
business in Nigeria by the reforms we
are introducing under the auspices of
the Presidential Committee on Ease of
Doing Business.
“This is why we have embarked on
measures and actions that will open
up the opportunities we have seen in
the Power, Housing, Agriculture,
Mining, Trade and Investment,
Information Communication
Technology (ICT) Sectors, Tourism,
Transport and other sectors.
“While Government is taking the lead
in the task of repositioning our economy
for Change, we cannot achieve this
completely by ourselves. We will need,
and we ask for the support and
cooperation of the private sector’s
domestic and foreign investors, the States
and Local Governments, the National
Assembly and the Judiciary as well as all
well-meaning Nigerians in this
important task. We are confident that
working together, we shall succeed,”
Buhari assured.
Budget and National Planning
Minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma,
explained that the retreat was timely as
it was deliberately arranged as part of
the government’s preparations for the
2017 budget, apparently to avoid the
problems noticeable in the previous
budgets.
Udoma said: “We want to make sure
that as a cabinet, we have synergy and
we look at the priorities for the
government for the 2017 budget and
make sure that in the light of the current
economic situation that the budget is well
structured to take us back on the path of
growth.
The minister said that with proper
synergy from the ministers and their
respective agencies, it would be possible
for the cabinet to speak with one voice
regarding the 2017 budget.
Udoma traced the genesis of the current
economic quackmire to a number of
factors but gave an optimistic view that
the adversity could be turned into an
opportunity for growth and development.
Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun,
expressed the government’s sympathy
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