TheCable

Kemi Adeosun, finance minister, says the Nigerian government will not fund every project detailed in the 2016 budgets because of scarcity funds and previous failure of agencies to deliver on projects.

Adeosun, on Thursday at sectoral debates before the house of representatives, said government’s priority is to reduce cost of living and create employments for 500,000 Nigerians.

She said her ministry discovered that not every agency which got funds for its project in the past took delivery of the project and funds will be released based on priority of projects.

“I can’t promise you that every single agency will receive every single Naira in the budget, that will be untrue and that will be a misleading impression,” she said.

“However, what I will assure is that there will be no favouritism, there will be no need for anybody to come and lobby in our office for the release of funds. Funds will be released first on priority of projects, MDAs must make request for the capital and we must measure how the capital is spent.”

Increase in minimum wage

Adeosun says the government will rather address cost of living than an increase of minimum wage.

“The issue is not actually about minimum wage, the issue is about cost of living because even if you increase the minimum wage to N100,000 and the cost of living is N120,000 then you have done nothing,” she said.

“What we have to address is the cost of living and this government addresses cost of living because it is investing in the things that make cost of living very high for the people such as power cost, transport cost, people spending hours on bad roads, it is being addressed, that is a cost.”

Adeosun says current interest rate for agriculture lending is not viable.

“Already, the Central Bank of Nigeria is doing some interventions around bringing down the cost of lending for agriculture and equally in part of commitment to the capitalisation of the Development Bank of Nigeria,” she said.

“We will be doing intervention funding as single digit to bring down the cost of funding for agriculture.

“We inherited debt of N60 billion due to supplies of fertilisers which were not paid by previous administration, the President has directed that we negotiate with them to see how we can pay to release money to them so that they can supply for this year and that has been done.”