Gbola Subair, Abuja
THE Federal Government has said that the economy faces real dangers next year. Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Remi Babalola, made this revelation at the last meeting of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) for 2008 at the weekend.
Babalola disclosed that the road to 2009 was full of potholes. He said the bottom line was that Nigeria had a challenging time ahead, stressing that “we must be courageous to come out a better structured economy.
“With strong economies going into recession and the whole global economy falling into lower growth, decoupling Nigerian economy from the global space is a non-starter. Deepening global downturn, shrinking capital flows and tightening credit conditions will task our fiscal ingenuity in 2009,” Bablola said.
Babalola, who added that the risks to the economic outlook were real, said “we need to be realistic, pragmatic and futuristic about our policy effectiveness.”
The minister, likening the outgoing year to a chapter in a good book, said as in many books, 2008 had certainly been full of many surprises, with some interesting turns of anxiety and uncertainty.
He said the government had been through some challenging times this year, especially with dwindling oil prices and the budget, stressing further that there had been many satisfying accomplishments along the way.
According to him, the government succeeded in resolving all outstanding issues emanating from Paris Club debt exit payments.
“We also resolved and implemented the holding of FAAC meetings not later than the 16th of every month to facilitate prompt payment of salaries and immediate fund utilisation nationwide. The decision to discontinue debiting beneficiaries with bank charges by the NCS and FIRS was also made in the year,” the minister said.
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