TheCable

Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, has revealed why Nigeria is insisting on not taking the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, in the face of pressing economic challenges.

Adeosun, who spoke to journalists after the G-24 meeting at the IMF Headquarters in Washington, said it was a two-way street discourse that sought to solve mutual and specific problems.

“They are hearing from us, what we are doing. And we are hearing from them what’s on offer, and what we have to do now is to go out into individual meetings and actually tie up some of these arrangements and tie them to specific projects, and that is what we’ll be doing in the next few days” she said.

WHY WE WON’T TAKE IMF LOANS

“We are not seeking loans from the IMF; the IMF simply gave us technical support. We are seeking budget support loans from the World Bank and from the ADB, and we are making progress with that”.

“We don’t have a balance of payment problem, and that is what the IMF looks to support country through. We have the fiscal challenge with our budget; therefore, we are looking for budget support, which is what the World Bank and the ADB will do.”

Adeosun said Nigeria made its contributions on solving infrastructure problems across emerging markets, while gleaning from what the multilaterals also have to offer.

“We had a very good meeting. We had presentations by the World Bank, and also by the managing director of the IMF, on the outlook of the global economy,” she said.

The G-24 Meeting in Washington

“We were able to make one or two contributions on behalf of Nigeria, one of which was really the need for accelerated investment in Infrastructure as the way out of our current situation.

“That is what we believe will create jobs; that is what we believe will reduce poverty.”

G-24 COMMITS TO BRIDGE INFRASTRUCTURAL SPENDING IN NIGERIA

She said the multilaterals made commitments to help Nigeria fund its power infrastructure.

“We made that intervention and got some commitments from the multilateral agencies, that they will support our investment in infrastructure by using creative financial instrument that will attract more money to add to what we have in the budget to enable us to attack our infrastructure gap.

“They spoke specifically about housing and energy — that is power — that they would support us on how to get concessional money into power. The other issue that was raised is the issue of tax evasion and the fact that we need the multilateral agencies to support us.

“The trade is very important, but we need the multilaterals to also support us to ensure that multinational companies that trade in Nigeria specifically, and emerging markets generally pay their fair share of taxes, and that point was well taken.”