No thanks, Nigeria tells IMF over offer of loan

The Federal Government has rejected the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offer to loan Nigeria money.

A statement from the federal ministry of finance stated that Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the IMF/World Bank, explained why the Federal Government is not excited about calls to apply for loan facility from the IMF to tackle some of the current economic challenges that Nigeria is facing due to the slump in global oil prices.

The minister said “Nigeria is adapting to its new realities and it is implementing fiscal policies to steer the country back on track for stable growth with a diversified economy. These policies and investment should enable Nigeria to show positive growth in 2017.”

Adeosun the statement added emphasized that what the country is passing through is surmountable, and that government is already applying a cocktail of measures to address the problem.

According to her, “Nigeria is not sick and even if we are, we have our own local remedy,” the Minister said, in an apparent response to a question on why the government has refused to apply for IMF loans.

Read also: Buhari attracts $6bn investment from China

The minister noted that the real vulnerability in the Nigerian economy is over-dependence on a single source of revenue, oil, and she explained that the government has “resolved to build resilience into the country’s economy to hedge against future oil shocks. This is because dependence on oil brings about vulnerability and laziness. So we are doing a combination of things to diversify our economy, with revenue mobilisation to enable sufficient investment in developing the non-oil
sectors.”

Adeosun told the IMF and World Bank audience that Nigeria now has “opportunities to reset the Nigerian economy and ensure that as we go forward, growth will be in a sustainable manner so that we won’t be vulnerable to oil price fluctuations, and with a truly diversified economy we would have enabled opportunities for wealth creation that would have trickled down to every Nigerian.”

The compelling business case in Nigeria she said is that the fundamentals remain very strong, a teaming, young growing population, rich in resources and with a government determined to finally get it right.

It may be recalled that the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, during her visit to the country on January 4th met President Muhammadu Buhari and other top Nigerian officials.

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