By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
The Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, has said the country would leverage on targeting part of the multi-trillion dollar global climate change financing.
He stated this yesterday at a one-day retreat organised by the Senate Committee on Appropriation, chaired by Senator Solomon Adeola, titled: Budget and budgetary process: Improved outcomes in 2024.
The Minister said there were a series of opportunities that could tapped into by the various agencies to secure funding from the numerous donor agencies that are eager to play a role in climate change.
He also noted that the focus of the current administration in the country was to reduce the deficit by focusing on concessioning funding and climate financing among others.
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He said, “The direction of the government is to reduce budget deficits, place emphasis on borrowing, particularly reducing foreign debts and capital market expensive borrowing.
“At the meeting, we just concluded in Dubai, the IMF Managing Director said the world is still suffering the shocks of the major global incidences like the COVID-19 and that the fiscal space is exhausted.
“Nigeria’s fiscal space is exhausted and the solution is that we have to focus on concessioning funding and climate financing.
“There is an estimated $1trn per annum to be spent for climate change. Just yesterday (Monday), the UAE announced $30bn for climate action. Another $1.5bn was announced by a global group.
“What that means is that as we move to fund the N27.5trn budget next year, our first port of call must be to target the cheapest concessionary financing including the climate change financing
“The Federal Government, three days ago, signed a €100m equity foreign direct investment for re-afforestation in the Mangrove Forest in Cross River State. We will go and search for similar types of transactions as much as possible.
“Our 2024 proposed budget states clearly that there is room for privatisation, maximising our assets without borrowing.
“We have to be brave, courageous, and innovative to make sure that we use the financial market to take our fiscal stress down to reduce our debt servicing and reduce our emphasis on borrowing.
“One of the ways available is that there are now countries and organisations willing to invest in our economy more than ever before. We need to optimise the resources we have particularly oil resources. The world is turning to CNG.
“Hence a few days ago, the President launched an initiative for electric vehicles. Major manufacturers of electric vehicles have started expressing interest and started discussions with us on their determination to establish electric vehicle plants in Nigeria.
“Such is the opportunity for our market here and such is the attraction the innovation has attracted to us as a nation.”
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, on the occasion, said his ministry had developed a database to attract foreign direct investment in the country.
He said, “There is a National Integrated Infrastructure Master plan which is in the custody of the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning. It has over 19,000 projects.
“We have commenced meetings with stakeholders in the infrastructure space, the MDAs, the Bureau of Public Enterprises, the infrastructure Bank, the DMOs, and the NIPC, to analyse them and take them to Investment Grid.
“This is to provide adequate information to investors. The 2024 budget also has provision for the Infrastructure Project Development Funds for that purpose.”
He also explained that there were plans to block leakages by stopping some MDA’s disregard for accountability.
He said, “President Bola Tinubu has asked the Coordinating Minister for the Economy to ensure that all GOEs operate accounts that could only be debited on the authority of the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and the Accountant General of the Federation.”
The President of the Senate President Godswill Akpabio, stressed the need for an aggressive revenue drive.
He said all the revenue-generating agencies must rise to the occasion. No matter how beautiful the budget is, it will not work if there is no money to spend.
He said, “My message is that all the GOEs must gear up to raise more revenues and block all the loopholes, leakages, and wastages so that the 2024 budget would be successfully implemented.
“The Senate and the House of Representatives are very determined to pass the budget before the end of this year to continue with the tradition of the January to December budget cycle.
“It however depended on the attitudes of the ministers and the MDAs to the budget defence sessions which will start immediately.
“I will urge the ministers to take the exercise very seriously by bringing all the heads of agencies under their supervision while coming to the National Assembly.”
Chairman Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Sani Musa, stressed the need to have the statistics of all the National Assets which are almost non-existent.
He said, “Some Government Owned Enterprises were keeping the assets as if they owned them. There is the need for us to harmonise and get a national registry for our assets.”
The keynote speaker on the occasion, Ayo Teriba, a Professor of Economics, expressed confidence that the country has the potential to meet its revenue projections for 2024 based on the performance of the 2023 budget in the last quarter of this year.
He called for a paradigm shift from the overreliance on petroleum revenue and tax to leverage of marketing the nation’s assets.
He said, “There is the need to take 35 per cent of the government-owned enterprises assets to the market to generate some liquidity.
“Apart from GOEs, national assets also included real estate. No MDA does not have one choice real estate or the other and most of them are lying there fallow.
“We need to know the current value of the real estate of the MDAs and the value of their current usage”
He also stressed the need to develop infrastructure that could generate revenues through public-private sector participation.
He said the country should focus attention on what it owns rather than what it owes as debt.
He said, “We talk about what we own as against what we owe. We have assets that can attract foreign direct investment which can liquidate our N89trn foreign debt.”
