Budget: Solid minerals was cheated – Fayemi

By Ali Smart

The Ministry of Solid Minerals had a shortfall of N648m in the 2015 budget, Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Kayode Fayemi has said.

Fayemi spoke at a press conference in Abuja at the weekend, when he presented a paper on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).

The ministry reportedly got N352million out of the budgeted N1 billion allocated to the ministry in 2015 fiscal year.

According to Fayemi, the total capital allocation to the ministry in the last five years from the federal budget had been less than N10 billion, a development, he said was responsible for the slow pace of progress in the mining sector.

“Funding has been a challenge partially because the sector had not been a focus area for both government and financial institutions. Over the past five years for example, the total capital allocation to the Ministry and it’s agencies in the Federal budget had been less than N10 billion and out of the N1 billion allocated for 2015, only N352 million was released.

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“Equally, access to finance has been practically non-existent from the banking industry. Indeed, as at today, the banking sectors exposure to the sector is less than 1% of its total portfolio, which demonstrates the limited focus on the sector. Thus a number of projects have drawn funding from offshore sources, while others have sought capital from a few Nigerian banks. We have commenced constructive engagement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and with commercial lenders to help them create the teams to sharpen commercial options for Nigerian miners.”

Fayemi also disclosed that President Buhari is determined to diversify the economy and the task of the ministry will be to remove any and all obstacles to growth, including working with the National Assembly to receive the right budgetary provisions to ensuring expansion in bulk handling terminals.

“The global mining market is in turmoil as key sources of demand that supported prices over the past two decades have declined. As you may be aware, there is continuous global decline in prices of mining products which has put mines and mining houses under tremendous pressure,” he said.

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