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Year 2020 Budget may have been passed by the Senate and signed by President Muhammad Buhari, some Nigerians still have reservations on it.
Mr. Segun David, the National President, Chemical and Non-Metallic Products Senior Staff Association of Nigeria(CANMPSSAN), in this interview
said it would be a wasteful expectation to think that the budget would translate into meaningful impact on the economy.
He also notes that the Minimum Wage though important is only for two percent of the nation’s workforce, which represent the civil servants. While the majority of the workforce in the Organised Private Sector will have to negotiate with their employers separately.
David equally speaks on how the economy has been impacting on the chemical sector operation.
Excerpts:
Impact of the economy
The impact of the economy in the last one year on the workforce, the companies and generally the sector, is not far fectched. There are so many challenges and we have been trying to manage it.The prices of goods have significantly gone up and the salary is not increasing. When we talk about the minimum wage, it does not make much effect on the entire workforce. For instance, only two percent of the entire workforce will enjoy the minimum wage because that represent the civil servants. It has nothing to do with us in this sector. The prices of goods and services have gone up because of the inflation, tax. And recently, the Federal Government added another increase in VAT. Just last month, many of our member companies have gone under. Some have to move out of the country. For Instance, Cadbury now outsourced. The bulk of their products have been transferred to another company. The same thing with IPWA. The company has been shut down for close to two years now. The management is at large. No gratuity, pensions for the workers. These are some of the challenges.
2020 Budget
Experience has taught us not to expect much in our budget from the figures bandied around on various sectors. Take for instance, about N2.6 trillion was budgeted for infrastructure, out of this, N2 trillion will be used to settle the money owed to the contractors. Now how do you expect to have a meaningful development with the remaining figure. The same thing is happening on the health and education. So, I wouldn’t talk much about the nominal figures that are quoted for the different sectors and things like that because they have become meaningless to me over time. They will put money for the different ministries and sectors and at the end of the day nothing will be achieved. But nonetheless in other to be able to encapsulate the budget content and make comparison between this year, last year and other years, I think the critical thing to do is to look at certain indices such as the quantum, i.e., the total amount being spent, you also want to look at the level of income and debt, the areas of leakages in the economy, have they been plugged with regards to things like subsidy and all the other so-called interventions. You want to look at the exchange rate stability, whether the exchange rate will be stable enough under the circumstances expected for the budget to achieve result without any major crisis in terms of Naira devaluation that will make the entire budget meaningless.
Border closure
Yes! Border has been closed for some months now. Government said it has been generating a lot from it, but what measure has government put in place to address the negative impact. Government is quick to cite China as an example, but do you know that it took the Chinese government six years, after the proposal before they eventually closed their border. They have to put so many things in place before engaging in border closure. What measure has our government put in place. Today we have just one seaport functioning. Others are in comatose. We need to look at all these.
Expectation and Advice
If there is a blue print from the government, then we may have hope. We all know that there is no organisation that can make good success without good policy, planning and significant implementation. We are extremely import dependants and remember no meaningful infrastructure. Government need to ensure that the monetary policy is well streamline so that the downtrodden like the Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs), MSME are empower to get something doing. There is need to also encourage investors to come into the country. Many people will not want to come into this country because of the lack of trust in our system, so government need to empower our judiciary system.
Collaboration with other unions
We are doing everything to collaborate with other unions because this is the only way we can address some of the issue affecting us. When you go together, you go far. We need to form a formidable force. You will discover that government is using divide and rule. This is what is happening in some unions. So, coming together is very important to be able to achieve results.
