TheCable

Clem Agba, minister of state for budget and planning, says the federal government spent more than N2.3 trillion as stimulus packages to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Agba disclosed this on Tuesday at the 3-Day 4th National Treasury Workshop organised by the office of the accountant general of the federation held in Akwa Ibom state.

He said that the fiscal and monetary policies supported states, businesses, households, and individuals through grants, tax relief, payroll support, tariff reductions, and direct support to the health sector.

According to the minister, the real sector interventions focused on mass agriculture, mass housing, public works, off-grid solar power installations, and support to small businesses.

“COVID-19, which started as a health pandemic, snowballed into an economic pandemic, so, to accelerate quick recovery of the economy, we developed some strategies which included; national stimulus economic package, mobilisation of external support and funding, and increase in non-oil revenue generation,” Agba said.

“These were aimed at retaining and creating jobs, increasing our productivity ensuring social stability, and addressing long-standing economic vulnerabilities.

“Thus, the impact of COVID-19 and dwindling revenue from oil, in spite of these, we will continue to expand government policies to cushion the effect with a total estimated stimulus package by the federal government of Nigeria of 2.3 trillion naira.

“We took steps to increase our non-oil revenue generation. These steps included but were not limited to VAT reforms in the Finance Act 2020, customs administration enhancement, tax exemption, increased remittances and recovery of remitted revenue from government-owned enterprises.”

In his remarks, Udom Emmanuel, governor of Akwa Ibom, said the state government had set up a post-COVID-19 economic advisory committee made up of professionals.

Emmanuel, who was represented by his deputy, Moses Ekpo, said that the state government had started implementing some of the committee’s recommendations, such as the applications of ICT and other tools of technology to stimulate entrepreneurial drives amongst the people.

On his part, Ahmed Idris, accountant-general of the federation, said that the workshop would provide financial shock-absorber to the government on how to manage any pandemic-induced financial challenges.

Idris added the workshop would further enlighten financial managers in government on how to control aggregate cash flows within fiscal, monetary and legal limits that would in the improvement in the management of critical government borrowings and deploying the same to infrastructure.