As the ongoing ministerial platform organised by the ministry of information for ministers to give stewardship of their activities within the past one year continues, Mathew OMEJE takes a look at the activities of the ministry of finance and its intending implication on the economy. Recently, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, rolled out the ministry’s activities towards ensuring a stable and viable economy for the country. On job creation, which is part of its functions, the ministry explained that it is managing some job creation programmes, which are direct and being undertaken and implemented by government under the SURE-P and YouWIN programmes. She explained that from the first round of the programme, “the ministry had already created 14,000 jobs all over the federation. This is just the first survey. The second survey, maybe another 14,000 – that is almost 30,000. We just launched the second round for women only and the third round we are going to launch for men and women, the target of 80,000 to 110,000 jobs is achieveable. “This programme is surpassing our expectations in terms of job creation and we are very proud of our young entrepreneurs who are doing this. We are also managing the Graduate Internship Program. Our objective is to place 50,000 graduate interns with the private sector. Over 1,000 private sector firms have applied. We have placed 1,309 graduates and we are working very hard to place all the 50,000 who are qualified to participate in this scheme. ”We were previously supporting the community services programme designed to create 370,000 jobs a year. We have moved that to the ministry of labour, but I want to tell you that 178,000 jobs have already been created.” The minister also explained the efforts of the ministry of finance in ensuring that public financial management is more efficient and transparent. The ministry had to step away from the manual management of finances whereby, money are sent in bulk to ministries to pay their staff, to pay for their expenses as they have now put in place three electronic platforms that have been introduced and are undergoing implementation at the moment. This is the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Management System (IPPM) which has allowed the ministry to pay staff through biometric data means. Though all the MDAs have not been captured in this system, the ministry has already recorded success with the 215 that have undergone this exercise, thereby, weeding out about 45,000 ghost workers and saving about N118 billion. In order to stem leakages and improve finances, the ministry has also worked very hard in terms of totally changing the way subsidy payments are made. The ministry noted that “We audited N1 trillion in subsidy payments under the presidential task force led by Aig Imokhuede, and we found N32 billion questionable. We have recovered N14 billion as we speak and we have tightened the payment process, so that there is more independent verification of how that is being done.” Speaking on the current condition of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Dr. Okonjo-Iwela said the stability of the GDP has enabled the economy to grow. The Nigeria economy is growing and growth is projected at 6.75% by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2013. Even the IMF has projected higher growth. “In comparism with some other countries, with the whole of sub- Saharan Africa, which are growing at 5.6%, so we are much higher; even the emerging markets, we are higher than them, especially South Africa, which is growing at 2.8%., while we at 6.75% et cetera so we are doing well!” The ministry also spoke on the need to have a healthy Excess Crude Account (ECA), noting that “We have made savings. Part of our reserves is also the Excess Crude Account savings. We have had about $4 billion in May 2011. We grew it to about $9 billion equivalent at the end of 2012, and now we are about $6 billion. Why are we down? Because the Excess Crude Account helps us to manage the economy and keep growing even when we experience shocks like when oil production comes down because of either oil theft or leakages from pipelines and so on. You know, the money we have saved enables this country to keep going and we have enough to keep us even in the face of shock for another four to five months whilst we try to solve our problems. “This is something that Nigeria did not have before and we are very proud of it. In the past, when we experience shocks, what did we do? We would have to go to the IMF or World Bank to look for money – the IMF in particular to shore up the economy, to shore up our balance of payments. But now, even through all the ups and downs that we have experienced, have we gone there? No. Because Nigeria has now put itself – with the existence of this Excess Crude Account in a position were in the event of any shock, we can go there to stabilise ourselves,” the minister said. She further urged Nigerians to support this account, stating that with the saving of this money in the Sovereign Wealth Fund, “this country, like a family must be able to put money aside so that if you experience shock, you don’t go around begging, you can stabilise yourself with your own savings.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 11:48:02 +0000
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