Nigerian govt warns of declining revenues, urges states to improve IGR

The Federal Government has warned that the country may experience some difficult period in the future due to its ailing revenues and finances.

This was contained in a statement issued by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, on Monday, April 19.

According to Ahmed, Nigeria’s economy was facing a difficult time, saying states must improve their internally generated revenues.

The Minister made this disclosure during an interview on a daily breakfast show on the Nigerian Television Authority, Good Morning Nigeria, while stating that the money shared at the March Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting was short of N50bn.

In the interview, the finance minister stated that the country’s economy was stabilising from the recession, which the country exited a few months ago.

She, however, added, “These are very difficult challenging times because revenues are low and the demand for expenditures are very high understandably because we have to keep intervening to make sure the pandemic is contained as well as the economic impact it has caused.

Read also: COVID-19: Nigeria’s revenues dropped by over 40% —Osinbajo

“In our case in Nigeria, the crash of the crude oil prices really hit us very hard in terms of revenue. We have very low revenues, we have very high expenditures.

“What we have done so far is just to provide some stability to make sure salaries are paid, pensions are received every month; that we send funds to the judiciary and the legislature; that we meet our debt service obligations.

“That’s what we are doing. It also means we have had to borrow more than we have planned before the COVID-19 started because we need to still continue to invest in infrastructure using our national budget.

“We borrowed to invest in key projects such as roads, rail, airports, seaports and several other investments that are required in health and in education and upgrading the social standards and quality of life of our people and Nigeria is not unique as several countries of the world went into recession.

“Almost every other country has had to borrow more than it planned. It means we expanded our deficit very fast in 2020. 2021 is a year that we see as the year of recovery.”

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