• Insists Tinubu has set Nigeria’s economy in right direction

From Adesuwa Tsan, Abuja

The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu, has assured legislators that the President Bola Tinubu administration will generate funds to finance the 2025 financial plans through innovative financing and line budget allocation.

Speaking to the National Assembly Joint Committees on National Planning, co-chaired by Sen. Yahaya Abdullahi and Hon. Isiaka Ibrahim, on Tuesday, he explained that President Tinubu had charged the petroleum, solid mineral, and creative industry sectors to ramp up their economic activities to improve revenue for the government.

The minister was accompanied to the budget defence by the Permanent Secretary, Dr Vitalis Emeka, ministry directors, and chief executives of its parastatals.

Bagudu said, “As the chief marketer of the Renewed Hope Agenda and Agenda 2050 strategies, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is poised to intensify its innovative financing to take forward the delivery of the Renewed Hope Infrastructure, including housing, roads, and railway.

“We shall more aggressively raise funding for our creative and high-impact programmes, including the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Fund, Consumer Credit, National Agriculture Development Fund, Mortgage Fund, CNG Energy Transition, Student Loans Fund, and support to NANO and MSMEs,” he said.

In addition to the funds that would accrue from maintaining fuel and removing forex subsidies, he continued, crude oil production will be increased beyond the estimated 2.06 million barrels per day at a lower cost as the Crude Oil Theft Committee ramps up its activities to contain crude theft and improve inflow to the national treasury.

He urged the lawmakers to pass the tax reform bills to make the government’s path to achieving its 18% revenue-to-GDP target achievable.

The Minister boasted, “Our country has done well. President Bola Tinubu is leading the country in the best of ways. He has charged all of us, his ministers, to work for excellence and do everything we can to ensure that the nation generates a higher level of growth that will include all. We will.”

“President Bola Tinubu has steered the economy in the right direction, and we are determined to stay the course,” Bagudu told the federal legislators, led by Senator Yahaya Abdullahi and Hon. Isiaka Ibrahim.

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“Under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, and with your support, our economy has turned the bend and is facing the right direction. The Renewed Hope Agenda Strategy of once and for all confronting our decades of underinvestment is working, and the positive trajectory is being sustained,” he said.

He said the GDP growth of more than 3% for three successive quarters, compared to less than 1% in industrialised countries, is evidence of the increasingly positive impact of the administration’s reforms.

Bagudu listed other positive impacts, including recovery of the economy, deficit reduction, and non-recourse to ways and means beyond legal limits from over 6.1% in 2023 to less than 4% in 2024, which he said global business leaders and rating agencies had acknowledged.

“The reform strategy has enhanced the liquidity of the sub-nationals: States and Local Governments. FAAC allocations to all tiers of government are on the increase. With the elimination of FOREX and fuel subsidies, among other reforms, the increase shall be sustained,” he assured.

Bagudu thanked the National Assembly for the approval of his ministry’s four parastatal budgets, which he said helped them deliver their mandates maximally.

The minister highlighted the critical roles of the parastatals in the nation’s social and economic growth and development and said the ministry supported them in guarding their independence jealously to sustain their credibility.

According to him, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), led by Dr Adeyemi Adeniran, consistently and timely released statistics on the nation’s economic activities despite the paucity of funds and is concluding its work on rebasing the GDP using 2019 prices.

On the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), headed by Prof Antonia Taiye Simbine, he said it was in the process of organising the Renewed Hope Agenda Lecture Series, which, he explained, would be a performance-tracking and measuring mechanism for the agenda, while commending the Dr Tanimu Yakubu-led Budget Office, which produced the 2025 estimates with several defining features that ensured transparency and guaranteed that the nation’s resources would be channelled to its critical needs.

He pointed out that the Centre for Management Development (CMD), under the leadership of Mr Bistros Chinoko, continued to be a world-class management development institution that sets standards for excellence in management development and economic administration.