CBN: About N4trn from 2016 budget yet to be implemented

Moses Tule, director of monetary policy at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says about N4 trillion from 2016 budget is yet to be implemented and will be implemented within now and July.

Speaking in an interview with Arise TV, Tule said about N12 trillion to N13 trillion will be spent by government in 2017, and this will by all means get the country out of recession.

Explaining the reasons behind the optimism of Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN, on why Nigeria will get out of recession before the end of September, Tule highlighted actions by fiscal authorities corroborating money policies.

“The economic growth plan has been launched, the IMF had cautioned that it is a good plan but that government should be very careful to follow through on the implementation, and I’m very sure that the fiscal authorities have taken that message very clearly,” he said.

“The plan is good on paper but you’d need to follow through with implementation. Secondly, the budget has been passed, the 2017 budget has been passed and you’re talking about N7.4 trillion.

“We also have about N4 trillion from 2016 budget to be implemented between now and June or July. If we add that together, you are talking about maybe 12 to 13 trillion charted  into this economy.”

The CBN director also said the inflow of foreign exchange and the removal  of rigidity in the foreign exchange market should drive more growth in the second quarter of 2017.

“Given the tempo of injection of capital from the capital budget, you can see that things are already trying to pick up. For the first quarter alone, 18 key activities recorded very substantial growth.

“That underscores the optimism. Besides the stability we’ve seen, all that happened in the first quarter were against the kind of rigidity we still have in the foreign exchange market.

“Those rigidity has been addressed, manufacturers are not going to have the kind of restrictions they had in the first quarter and second quarter figures are actually going to be much better than we had in the first quarter.”