Towards a resilient Nigerian economy: Adeosun: Capital projects are key Peterside: 11 things govt isn’t doing
Minister of Finance Mrs Kemi Adeosun and prominent banker and businessman Atedo Peterside offered sharply contrasting perspectives to the search for Nigeria’s future economic prosperity at the 14th Daily Trust Annual Dialogue in Abuja yesterday.
While the Finance Minister listed key areas in which the Muhammadu Buhari administration has been directing its efforts for future progress, Peterside, chairman of Stanbic IBTC KEEP DONATING TO THE bank, listed what he said are eleven things that the Federal Government is not doing to ensure economic
prosperity. On his part, former Petroleum Minister Chief Phillip Asiodu called for a return to national development planning without which he said real progress will be difficult to achieve.
The Finance Minister said the key to pulling Nigeria out of economic recession and placing it on the path to sustainable economic progress is through a massive investment in infrastructure. The current administration, she said, is working hard to reduce the Federal Government’s bloated recurrent expenditure and free up funds for capital investment. She also said the government must borrow in order to make up for the shortfall in revenues required for capital projects. She spoke at length about how lack of infrastructure had held up economic progress in the country, including in the agricultural sector where farmers and fishermen find it difficult to move their produce to markets.
Peterside however said the Central Bank of Nigeria’s [CBN] foreign exchange and demand management policies have failed and that the apex bank “has inadvertently created a siege mentality, thereby making privileged access to its forex allocations, which are reserved largely for the politically well-connected, the best investment game in town.” Other problem areas listed by Peterside include the administration’s failure to reach some accommodation with Niger Delta militants which he said cost the nation over $6 billion per annum; sell some oil assets in order to improve long-term efficiency and yield foreign currency; urgently deregulate the entire downstream petroleum sector and also privatise NNPC’s three refineries, depots, pipelines and domestic gas.
Other things Peterside said government is not doing to turn the economy round include taming what he called a “bloated, corrupt and inefficient” civil service which consumes 60-70% of the annual budget via recurrent expenditure; restructure the federation and replace the states with zones in order to free more funds for projects; enhance privatisation of the power and transportation sectors; and also reform the country’s “dysfunctional legal system,” which he said is an impediment to the rapid growth of a modern economy.
Mr Atedo Peterside also called for government to respect the rule of law and obey the Courts in its anticorruption crusade; restoring business confidence by ending the situation where high officials threaten investors with closure, bankruptcy, fines or seizure of their goods; and he also urged the Federal Government to immediately appoint directors to the boards of every regulatory agency. He said without boards, a lone wolf regulator can hold the entire system to ransom, destroy business confidence and hamper economic growth.
Former “super permanent secretary” Chief Phillips Asiodu, who chaired yesterday’s event, called for a return to the era of national planning when all three tiers of government key in to a national Development Plan. He also regretted that the Vision 2010 plan prepared by the Abacha regime was abandoned by subsequent regimes, as was the Vision 20:20 plan. He called for an upgrading of the latter to a Vision 20:30 plan and its full implementation.
See details of all three presentations in the Special Section, pages 25-32.