PDP: Buhari, Adeosun CANNOT rescue the economy from recession
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is incapable of rescuing Nigeria from economic recession.
Deji Adeyanju, PDP new media director, said this in a statement on Friday.
He said that the government was not taking the right steps to save the economy.
He described the statement of Kemi Adeosun, finance minister, that the government would bring Nigeria out of recession through fiscal discipline and diversification as “empty rhetoric.”
“Yesterday, the minister of finance – Mrs Kemi Adeosun – stated that the Muhammadu Buhari administration will focus on two policies to remove Nigeria from recession – fiscal discipline and diversification,” he said.
“Firstly, we believe a recession is not reversed by diversification. A recession is reversed by implementing a stimulus package designed to cut taxes, reduce the cost of doing business and boost spending on infrastructure & other critical sectors of the economy.
“Available data shows that the Buhari administration has spent a meagre 19 percent of the allocation for CAPEX in budget 2016. This sort of spending will not make any sort of impact on the economy.
“Assuming, but not conceding that Mrs Adeosun is right, the challenge is the past 15 months show that despite the glib talk the Buhari administration is doing neither.
“For instance, despite claims of weeding out ghost workers from the payroll and reducing the civil service wage bill, Nigeria’s wage bill increased from N1.65tr in 2014 to N1.83tr and N1.71tr in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
“These figures represent a combined total increase of N240bn from the wage bill in 2014.
“Two days ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released its economic report for Q2 2016 which showed that the FG incurred a N1.09tr deficit for the quarter. This deficit was 96 percent higher than the N555.49b allowed.
“Total expenditure for this period stood at N1.76 trillion, surpassing the provisional quarterly budget estimate by 12.8 percent, representing a 58.1 percent increase of the Q1 expenditure.”
Adeyanju said that the figures showed “an abject lack” of fiscal discipline in the management of the nation’s finances by the Buhari administration.
“On diversification, GDP figures released by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) yesterday show that the Buhari administration is doing significant harm to non-oil sectors of the economy,” he said.
“Non oil GDP contracted by -0.38 percentin Q2 2016 from -0.18 percent in Q1 2016 and 3.46 percent in Q2 2015.
“Furthermore, CBN figures show that non-oil export fell by 43.2 percent to $576.97m in Q2 2016.
“As the data shows, even sectors that experienced growth in Q2 have slowed considerably compared to Q1 2016 & Q2 2015.
“As these figures show, the Buhari administration is just paying lip service to the issue of diversification and it is in fact worsening the non-oil sectors of the economy.
“These figures also show that Mrs Adeosun’s comments about fiscal discipline are diversification are empty rhetoric.
“We reiterate our position that this government is out of depth and is incapable of reversing the economic recession into which they have plunged our nation.”
Earlier, the PDP had asked Buhari to resign for allegedly “destroying” the economy.
Always voted PDP. Don’t understand them these days though…just so full of criticism. We should leave the Buhari administration alone to get on with cleaning up the mess we made with sinking the economy. We were ruling for a while and it was a big party. Let’s leave all this negativism please. Critisims must be constructive to be effective. Andits easier to spoil things It will take longer to make things better. Do we expect it to get well overnight. We spent with so much recklessness for years… party is over folkes. We are Technically in recession.
Nice one their, @simeonpeter PDP needs to stop all this criticism and let work be done.critisizing wouldn’t do the work at hand
The present administration agenda to focus on two policies to remove Nigeria from recession – fiscal discipline and diversification is a call in the right direction. Lets Give The Minister the chance. There is no change without sacrifice. Lets support Diversification, Investment and Fiscal Discipline (DID)
It’s only lame to criticize this move, before oil in this nation we sustained on other resources but we left it for oil that’s only 13% of our resources. We need to diversify to make a balance
Must PDP Steer up distractions? What we re facing in the nation has been on ground over time and requires time to fix it. Condemning diversification is only lame, even the last GDP bt NBS showed its the non-oil sectors that grew positively.the non-oil sectors is 87% of the nations resources yet we wnt to concentrate on Oil that’s jus 13%, even now that oil market all over the world is falling. PDP should stop all this distractions and let’s support and move this country
It should be noted that the FG / The Ministry of Finance are doing all they can to elevate us from this economic downturn. They have put in place measures and plans to strengthen infrastructure, agriculture and manufacturing in Nigeria.