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Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu, said on Tuesday that President Bola Tinubu had steered the economy in the right direction and was determined to stay the course.
The minister spoke during the defence of his ministry’s financial estimates before the National Assembly Joint Committees on National Planning in Abuja.
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He said the Tinubu administration’s economic reforms were working, and the economy was on the path to full recovery.
“President Bola Tinubu has steered the economy in the right direction, and we are determined to stay the course,” Mr Bagudu told the federal legislators, led by Yahaya Abdullahi, a senator and Isiaka Ibrahim of the House of Representatives.
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“Under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, and with your support, our economy has turned the bend and facing the right direction. The Renewed Hope Agenda Strategy of once and for all confronting our decades of underinvestment is working, and the positive trajectory is being sustained,” he said.
He pointed out that GDP growth of more than three per cent for three successive quarters, compared to less than one per cent in industrialised countries, evidenced the increasingly positive impact of the administration’s reforms.
Mr Bagudu, a former governor of Kebbi State, listed other positive impacts, including recovery of the economy, deficit reduction, and non-recourse to ways and means beyond legal limits from over 6.1 per cent in 2023 to less than four per cent in 2024, which he said global business leaders and rating agencies had acknowledged.
“The reform strategy has enhanced the liquidity of the sub-nationals: States and Local Governments. FAAC allocations to all tiers of government are on the increase. With the elimination of FOREX and fuel subsidies, among other reforms, the increase shall be sustained,” he told the legislators.
The minister assured the legislators that the Tinubu administration would generate the funds to finance the 2025 financial plans through innovative financing and line budget allocation.
To this end, he explained that President Tinubu had charged the petroleum, solid mineral, and creative industry sectors with developing their potential.
Mr Bagudu emphasised that with the help of the National Assembly, his ministry, which he said was the chief marketer of Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and Agenda 2050 strategies, would implement innovative financing measures to expand economic activities and generate substantial revenue to fund ongoing critical infrastructures.
“As the chief marketer of the Renewed Hope Agenda and Agenda 2050 strategies, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is poised to intensify its innovative financing to take forward the delivery of the Renewed Hope Infrastructure, including housing, roads and railway.
“We shall more aggressively to raise funding for our creative and high-impact programmes, including Renewed Hope Infrastructure Fund, Consumer Credit, National Agriculture Development Fund, Mortgage Fund, CNG Energy transition, Student Loans Fund, and support to NANO and MSMEs,” he said.
He explained that, in addition to the funds that would accrue from maintaining fuel and removing forex subsidies, the administration was determined to increase crude oil production beyond the estimated 2.06 barrels per day at a lower cost.
The minister said more funds will flow into the national treasury as the Crude Oil Theft Committee ramps up its activities to contain crude theft.
“Our ministry and agencies are leading many engagements to get more resources to finance critical infrastructures in your constituencies,” Mr Bagudu told the legislators, explaining that there would be more spending with more revenues.
He urged legislators to pass the tax reform bills, saying their passage would smoothen the government’s path to achieving its 18 per cent revenue-to-GDP target, assuring them that the Tinubu administration remained focused on achieving a higher growth rate that would include all this year.
Mr Bagudu, a former senator, also spoke about the ministry’s bilateral and multilateral coordination mandate and said the economic reforms earned the appreciation and respect of the nation’s development partners.
He said many countries, including China, had comprehensively scaled up their relations and partnerships with Nigeria.
He emphasised that the ministry signed many high-impact agreements on behalf of the country last year, including five with China and six with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
He recalled that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, and Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, visited Nigeria. At the same time, President Bola Tinubu visited several countries in the preceding year to project the stabilising effect of the economic reforms on the nation’s economy.
“Our country has done well. President Bola Tinubu is leading the country in the best of ways. He has charged all of us, his ministers, to work for excellence and do everything we can to ensure that the nation generates a higher level of growth that will include all. We will,” Mr Bagudu stated.
He thanked the National Assembly for its budgetary approval of his ministry’s four parastatals, which he said helped the agencies deliver their mandates maximally.
The minister highlighted the critical roles of the parastatals in the nation’s social and economic growth and development and said the ministry supported them in guarding their independence jealously to sustain their credibility.
He said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), led by Adeyemi Adeniran, consistently and timely released statistics on the nation’s economic activities despite the paucity of funds. The agency is concluding its work on rebasing the GDP using 2019 prices.
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He revealed that the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), headed by Antonia Simbine, a professor, was in the process of organising the Renewed Hope Agenda Lecture Series, which, he explained, would be a performance-tracking and measuring mechanism for the agenda.
Mr Bagudu commended the hard work of the Tanimu Yakubu-led Budget Office, which produced the 2025 estimates with several defining features that ensured transparency and guaranteed that the nation’s resources would be channelled to its critical needs.
He pointed out that the Centre for Management Development (CMD), under the leadership of Bistros Chinoko, continued to be a world-class management development institution that sets standards for excellence in management development and economic administration.
Messrs Abdullahi and Ibrahim, the co-chairpersons of the committee, commended Mr Bagudu for the helicopter-view presentation and urged him to ensure a more appreciative implementation of the capital component of the 2025 Budget.
The minister was accompanied to the budget defence by the Permanent Secretary, Vitalis Emeka, ministry directors, and chief executives of its parastatals.
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