Buhari, Adeosun can’t resolve our economic problem, says PDP

By Michael Abimboye

Nigeria’s opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun over claims that it will focus on two policies to remove Nigeria from recession – fiscal discipline and diversification.

PDP said it believes a recession is not reversed by diversification. “A recession is reversed by implementing a stimulus package designed to cut taxes, reduce the cost of doing business and boost spending on infrastructure and other critical sectors of the economy,” the party said in a statement signed by Deji Adeyanju, its New media director.

The party also pointed out that “Available data shows that the Buhari administration has spent a meagre 19 percent of the allocation for CAPEX in #Budget2016. This sort of spending will not make any sort of impact on the economy.

“Assuming but not conceding that Mrs Adeosun is right, the challenge in the past 15 months show that despite the glib talk the Buhari administration is doing neither. For instance, despite claims of weeding out ghost workers from the payroll & reducing the civil service wage bill, Nigeria’s wage bill increased from N1.65tr in 2014 to N1.83tr and N1.71tr in 2015 & 2016 respectively.

“These figures represent a combined total increase of N240bn from the wage bill in 2014. Two days ago, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released its economic report for Q2 2016 which showed that the FG incurred a N1.09tr deficit for the quarter. This deficit was 96 percent higher than the N555.49b allowed. “Total expenditure for this period stood at N1.76 trillion, surpassing the provisional quarterly budget estimate by 12.8 percent, representing a 58.1 percent increase of the Q1 expenditure.

“These figures show an abject lack of fiscal discipline in the management of the nation’s finances by the Buhari administration,” the party said.

PDP said the diversification claim by the Buhari government is absent as the GDP figures released by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the Buhari administration is doing significant harm to non-oil sectors of the economy. “Non oil GDP contracted by -0.38 percent in Q2 2016 from -0.18 percent in Q1 2016 and 3.46% percent in Q2 2015.  Furthermore, CBN figures show that non-oil export fell by 43.2 percent to $576.97m in Q2 2016. As the data shows, even sectors that experienced growth in Q2 have slowed considerably compared to Q1 2016 and Q2 2015.

“As these figures show, the Buhari administration is just paying lip service to the issue of diversification and is in fact worsening the non-oil sectors of the economy. These figures also show that Mrs. Adeosun’s comments about fiscal discipline and diversification are empty rhetoric.”

PDP reiterates that this government is out of depth and is incapable of reversing the economic recession into which they have plunged our nation. Recall that PDP had described the comment by the minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun as highly intensive and out of line. In a statement made available to our reporter, PDP said Contrary to her belief, “recession” is not just a word, It’s a horrible reality for millions of Nigerians who face increasing difficulty in putting food on the table and meeting basic everyday financial obligations.
Source: Naij.com News