Nigerians to face hard time as oil price slum affect the economy, speaking with journalist yesterday the Finance Minister unveil the new austerity measures to be adopted by the FG as a control measure.
More tax, less expenditure no more int'l travel for public servant.....
Read the press statement as reported by Punch.
The decline in the price of crude oil may have started taking its toll on Nigeria as the Federal Government on Sunday announced measures aimed at cushioning its impact on the economy.
The Minister of Finance and the Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy , Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced this Abuja while addressing journalists on the Federal Government’s response to the crisis in Abuja on Sunday.
The measures which will see Nigerians paying tax on luxury goods, comes barely six days after President Goodluck Jonathan formally announced his intention to contest the February 14, 2015 election.
Okonjo-Iweala, in company with the Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation, Dr Bright Okogu; the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Jonah Otunla; the Acting Chair, FIRS, Alhaji Kabir Mashi and other top officials, told the journalists that the nation would be experiencing a challenging time owing to the global fall in oil prices.
The other measures, according to her, are a reduction in public expenditures and international travels by public servants.
She however, assured that the Jonathan Economic Management Team was “on top of the situation” to proffer measures that would help to ensure that the “common man” did not feel the impact of the oil price decline.
She recalled that in the last three years, the Executive in its discussions on the national budgets with the National Assembly, had consistently advocated prudence and a low budget benchmark to encourage more savings.
The minister stressed that even though the drop in oil prices was a serious challenge, it was also an opportunity for the country to refocus efforts towards the non-oil sectors in preparation for a future with less oil revenue.
As part of the efforts to reduce expenditure, she said international travel within the public service would be severely curtailed, adding however, that critical infrastructure projects would not be affected because they were key to economic growth, development and job creation.
She said, “Every country that is well managed doesn’t just seat and allow a situation to happen to them. If they are well managed, they prepare the right set of policies to deal with the situation.
“Those days when we used to be like that in the ‘80s and 90s are over. In the ‘80s, when we had shocks, we didn’t take measures by ourselves to adjust. We waited for others to come and tell us how to adjust. But now we have competent teams and our job is not to sit and wait, but, to craft a set of policies and that will help us address these shocks.
“We are not talking about (cutting) salaries and benefits. We are talking of trainings and travels and these will be only for critical and essential items which will be pre-approved by the Head of Service and the Director-General of the Budget Office and then if someone invites you for overseas course, you can go provided they pay for your training and your stay and you have to furnish evidence that they are paying before you will be allowed.
“The purpose of this is to tell you what we are doing and this team is calm and will be effective and we are working with the monetary policy authorities and together we will manage the economy in a transparent manner so that people need not have any fear.”
She also talked about the report of the Steven Oronsanye committee, which was set up by government to prune down ministries and agencies.The committee had recommended that some of the agencies should be merged.
“We found that a lot of these agencies are underpinned by law and we discussed with the National Assembly and they are willing to look at how their laws can be repealed. So this is also part of our medium term measures,” she said.
Can you imagine, this Gov is useless. After wasting our money on elections and BH now we have to pay for it.
ReplyDelete