- N350bn earmarked to stimulate economy is a good elixir at this point in time
After months of palpable meltdown, the economy seems finally set to receive the much-needed shot in the arm as promised by the Buhari administration. Emerging from a two-day National Economic Council (NEC) retreat in Abuja last week, finance minister Kemi Adeosun outlined the administration’s plan to spend N350 billion – a component of the 2016 Budget – to stimulate the economy. The plan primarily seeks to get contractors that have stopped work due to paucity of funds to re-engage staff and get back to work. This, according to her, “would bring significant economic activity.”
Also on the cards is a legislative approval to change the requirement for counterpart funding for the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Programme, to reduce the burden on state governments. As against the existing plan which requires states to pay 50 percent as counterpart fund to access UBE funds, the new plan seeks to reduce that requirement to 10 per cent – a move expected to free up an estimated N58 billion currently un-accessed by state governments. NEC’s view was that the fund would go a long way to address around 1,000 of the worst classrooms in each of the 36 states, with massive spin-offs on job creation and improved economic activity.
We couldn’t agree more with the premise that the economy needs all the help it can get at the moment – and fast too. Most certainly, one of the most important steps to take is to get the contractors back to their sites. If only for the sake of the 197,000 kilometres of federal roads of which only 18 percent is barely passable; the daily agonies of motorists on the death traps that the roads have been reduced to, as well as the humongous costs of vehicle maintenance and, of course, the countless man-hours lost on the highways, the intervention could not have come at a better time.
Well channelled, the massive spend will surely help bridge the infrastructure gap, a steady path towards boosting domestic manufacturing capacity while supplying a launch pad for industrial competitiveness.
