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Kemi Adeosun

#VAIDS: 500 Prominent Nigerians Invited to Regularise their Tax Status – Adeosun

By: Bhodemarz on November 26, 2017 / comment : 0 , , , ,

About 500 prominent Nigerians with property and trusts abroad are to be invited to determine their tax compliance status at home.
The Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, said the 500 Nigerians would be served letters from Monday to invite them to take advantage of the tax amnesty to regularise their tax status and avoid prosecution and fines.
According to a statement from her office, the minister disclosed this on Saturday at a workshop organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and Joint Tax Board, JTB for lawyers, accountants and other professionals in Lagos.
The names of the affected Nigerians were compiled by the government recently as part of tax amnesty policy under the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme, VAIDS, initiative.
VAIDS, an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the State Tax Authorities, provides tax defaulters a nine-month opportunity to voluntarily and truthfully declare previously untaxed assets and incomes.
The tax amnesty period is expected to lapse on March 31, 2018.
“The first 500 letters are ready and will go out this week,” the Minister said. “But, there are many more.
“Receiving the letter is not an accusation of deliberate wrongdoing” but rather a notice that the data suggests possible underpayment and a prompt to check compliance,” the minister explained.
“It is premature to call such persons tax evaders as there are many reasons that taxpayers may have failed to comply. We will only label people as real tax evaders when the amnesty deadline expires and they have failed to regularize.
“We are sending out thousands of letters to those in the high risk categories. But our advice is that every person and every company should do a self-assessment and take advantage of VAIDs to correct any under declaration, irrespective of whether they get a letter,” she added.
Mrs. Adeosun said government was generating lots of data, both locally and internationally, on property ownership and other items by Nigerians.
As part of efforts to develop reliable tax payers database, Mrs. Adeosun said government had reviewed all companies that received major payments from the federal government in the last five years to identify those who may have made money from government, but under-declared.
The minister said after the government’s tax compliance team had looked at import records and compared the value of goods imported to the tax declarations of the importers, its findings on the variance was “wide, disturbing and worrisome.”
On personal income tax, she said government had reviewed property and company ownership as well as registration of high value assets and foreign exchange allocations, to give a sense of the lifestyles of their owners.
“We found major non-compliance. In some cases, people declared as little as N10 million as income, but purchased expensive property overseas and in Nigeria, registered high specification vehicles and funded luxurious personal events, costing multiples of the declared income,” she noted.
“We have blocked a major loophole by using data to profile tax payers. Thus, someone owning properties across multiple states and overseas can selectively declare knowing that tax authority had no means of cross checking.
“This is especially the case with overseas assets and income where state governments lacked jurisdiction. But with the centralisation of data under Project Lighthouse within the Federal Ministry of Finance, a major loophole has been plugged,” she added.
The minister reiterated the willingness of the government to prosecute tax evaders after the tax amnesty period had elapsed.
She therefore called on tax professionals to advise their clients to uphold honesty in the declaration of their assets and income as well as the regularisation of their tax status.
To create awareness on the tax amnesty programme, the minister said the federal government had recruited and trained 2,190 Community Tax Liaison Officers, CTLOs out of which about 1,710 have been deployed to 33 states.
The CTLOs are currently operating in Adamawa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun and Oyo, among others.
The CTLOs were part of the 7,500 job opportunities the federal government said would be generated for Nigerians through the N-Power scheme.
Noting the cooperation between the federal, states and foreign governments, Mrs. Adeosun said they have provided an unprecedented level of data to the Nigerian government.
These data, she said, had allowed government profile taxpayers accurately and identify those whose lifestyle and assets were not consistent with their declared income.


Source: PremiumTimes

NIGERIA IS OUT OF RECESSION AND PRESIDENT BUHARI IS TRANSFORMING THE ECONOMY, BY KEMI ADEOSUN

By: Bhodemarz on October 28, 2017 / comment : 0 , , , ,

Around the middle of 2014, when the price of crude oil fell dramatically, Nigeria’s finances became challenged. This is not hard to explain: We’ve historically depended on crude oil for as much as 70 per cent of government revenues and 90 per cent of foreign exchange earnings. The outcome—pressure on government finances—was by no means unusual. A similar fate befell most oil-rich countries around the world.
Where Nigeria possibly stood out was in the fact that during the preceding three years—when oil prices were in excess of $100 per barrel—the previous administration did little in terms of saving and investing for the future. Our sovereign wealth fund—which was established in October 2012 with just US$1 billion—did not receive any further inflow during the oil price boom. Instead, billions of dollars were squandered through corrupt oil and defense contracts.
It is a terrible thing for a country to fall on hard times without a savings buffer. But there was nothing unexpected about our downturn. It was the inevitable result of the choices we made or didn’t make during the years of boom.
What is remarkable—yet not talked about as much—is the way we have worked so hard to exit the recession, reset the economy and reposition Nigeria for a brighter future for present and future generations of Nigerians. President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration are laying the foundations for the kind of economic growth that makes a real impact in the lives of citizens.
The downturn has inspired unprecedented levels of fiscal responsibility, in line with President Buhari’s determination to fight Nigeria’s endemic corruption.
Shortly after taking office, he issued a presidential order mandating the immediate implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) system, consolidating thousands of government accounts scattered across banks into a unified system that is transparent and easy to centrally monitor and track. Under the old system, it was common for government accounts to be converted into personal use, but under the TSA this is impossible. Also, the proliferation of accounts encouraged several questionable practices.
Budgetary reform has also taken a lot of our time and attention. We are pioneering the use of software to prepare our annual budgets, which allows greater transparency and the ability to track changes.
We have insisted on using biometric verification in the deployment of our social investment programme, which includes a job scheme for unemployed graduates; a school feeding scheme for primary school pupils; a conditional cash transfer scheme targeting a million of our poorest citizens; and a micro-credit scheme for artisans, farmers, and traders. In the past, social investment payments would have been made as cash handouts.
A similar insistence on biometric verification for the federal payroll has resulted in the detection of tens of thousands of bogus beneficiaries—or “ghost workers,” as we often refer to them in Nigeria—and savings running into billions of naira every month. The tighter rein on public finances allowed us invest $500 million in our sovereign wealth fund during a recession.
We are pursuing unprecedented cooperation with foreign governments and powers, as part of our transparency and anti-corruption drive. For the simple reason that a disproportionate amount of public funds looted in Nigeria end up in the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria has signed bilateral agreements with the UAE government on extradition, exchange of information, and repatriation of stolen public funds.
One strong demonstration of our political will has been a whistleblowing scheme we launched months ago that empowers citizens to report public corruption. The impact in terms of recoveries has exceeded our expectations: In two high-profile examples, $43 million and $9.8 million in looted cash were recovered from apartments in Lagos in the south and Kaduna in the north respectively.
A lot of the work we have done since President Buhari came to office in May 2015 has been focused on dismantling the old ways of doing things, rebuilding them, and empowering and fortifying our institutions with technology to block loopholes, discourage abuse, and prevent a relapse into the destructive ways of the past.
The new Nigeria we seek will not happen without this kind of foundational reform that imposes on us new ways of thinking and of doing things. The early results are already being seen. A concerted focus on agriculture has seen our rice imports from Thailand dropping by 90 per cent between 2015 and 2016 and being replaced by locally grown variants.
As oil has let us down, we have started to do what we should have done decades ago: Invest in agriculture and mining. Throughout the recession, agriculture recorded healthy growth. As we emerge from the recession, its impact is certain to multiply and position Nigeria for a prosperous future.
The most important elements of any reform effort tend to be the least flamboyant. We are confident that in the months and years ahead, Nigerians and the world will see the full impact of the foundational resetting that the Buhari administration has been focused on since 2015.
There is of course a lot of resistance to reform, by vested interests within and outside the system. But we are not fazed. The work of reform goes on. To borrow a phrase from the Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, it is morning yet on Creation Day. Not very long from now, Nigerians and the world will look back on the recession we have just emerged from, and realize that it was the turning point in Nigeria's journey to true growth and greatness.

Kemi Adeosun is the Minister of Finance of Nigeria.

Culled from Newsweek


Adeosun: Luxury tax will commence soon — rich people must bear the burden

By: Bhodemarz on October 16, 2017 / comment : 0 , , ,

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, says the federal government will soon start collecting luxury taxes.
Addressing journalists at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC on Sunday, Adeosun said people with higher income must bear a greater part of the tax burden.
“The luxury tax planned by the federal government is being finalised now because it cuts across the ECOWAS. There is a legal process you must go through, including the customs union to actually vary the specific taxes,” she said.
“The problem we have in the country is not just that the system needs to be overhauled, it is also that people are not complying and this is because there is no consequence. We have just started with Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) as a measure to tackle that and the response is impressive.
“In any tax system, the burden must be borne by anybody whose income allows to bear it, so those with higher income should by definition, bear a greater part of the burden.”
She disclosed that some rich people had approached her to speak to their governors about taxes payable to state governments.
“In fact, people have started declaring and I have had a number of approaches from high net worth people asking me to speak on their behalf to state governors to allow them time to comply because their personal taxes are payable to state governments,” she said.
“I have encouraged every governor that everyone who comes to declare should be given enough time to pay up. This is because the amount of tax that they would have to pay is big.
“Whether taxing the rich will increase public revenue or not, it is all about public revenue to which they are obligated for public services.
“The problem currently is that those at the lower level are the ones paying. If the man in the traffic control, with little income will pay at source, why should we not pursue the billionaire or the trillionaire to pay out of the income? We need to change the mindset in the country with regards to tax system.”
In August, Adeosun announced that the federal government had signed a policy to tax first class and business class air tickets alongside other luxury goods.
Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, had earlier said making the rich pay more taxes will not solve the problem of inequality in the world and advised countries to reduce the gender gap between men and women.
However, Godwin Emefiele, governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said women have not been approaching the bank to access the funds set aside for small and medium scale entrepreneurs.
“Of course I am a man, but I need to say there is a need to support women. In our micro, small and medium enterprises funds (MSMEs) of N220 billion, 60% is reserved for women but we are not even seeing the women coming,” he said
Adeosun also called for the creation of more opportunities for women saying “investing in women is the best investment any country can make”.


Source: thecable

Re: Kemi Adeosun’s ‘Deconstructing The Debt Story’ By Oluseun Onigbinde

By: Bhodemarz on October 10, 2017 / comment : 0 , , , , ,

It is important that public officeholders clarify the issues that citizens are distraught about. One such issue has been the case of rising public debt. Kemi Adeosun's piece comes in the context of the well-rehashed situation that the current administration met upon taking office. With its hail of campaign promises without counting the cost, the Buhari-led government pushed itself into a tyranny of expectations. I guess Nigerian politicians will be more mindful when they make promises, as the campaign pamphlets had programs with at least N19tn yearly to fulfill.
We must also understand that the issue of debt is not treated with consternation, as Kemi Adeosun wrote. It is a right argument that requires our interest in inter-generational equity. If we are amassing the debt that will be a burden on future revenues, it is important to demand more transparency on what exactly we are bequeathing the future and the economic viability of it. Nigeria paid $13bn to settle the Paris Club of creditors mostly tied to frivolous infrastructure that had no economic impact on the current generation.
It must also be said that this administration has not been more transparent than previous governments as regards debt numbers. I reckon that DMO has to be one of the best-managed government institutions with how it maintains an updated register of the national debt. Several officers who worked at state governments where it is nearly impossible to get fiscal numbers and currently at the federal level are surprised at this level of transparency, but we must be vigilant that this not rolled back in a bid to silence varied discussions. Despite the anti-corruption crusade, it has become impossible to get a detailed breakdown of the N1.2tn capital releases as claimed for 2016 budget cycle. Except for NNPC that started its monthly operations and financial reports, this administration has not been more transparent than previous governments, and it needs to sincerely improve this. The Buhari-led government has not provided details of capital releases on the project basis, no bold attempts on open contracting, never applied punitive sanctions to those indicted in Auditor-General reports or any tangible thought on campaign financing, a drain on public resources at all levels. So which improved transparency are we talking about?
Diving into the numbers, the unfortunate thing about the current fiscal management is how it has not shown any belt-tightening approach in the way public officers parade themselves. We don’t know any radical approach to reduce aides of public officers nor has there been any interactive party-level discussions on the National Assembly to rein its cost. In a budget approved during the recession, it is still littered with purchase of cars at N25bn, computer software acquisition at N9bn etc. One would have expected that beyond the serial removal of ghost workers that has not lead to a single prosecution and has always been a public relations stunt for successive governments, the entire Nigerian budgets will solely prioritize not a cluster of administrative capital projects but developmental capital projects with direct impact on the people. The ballpark figure of N1.2tn thrown around has no public details. How can such amount be spent with serial commissioning of projects since the Kaduna-Abuja rail? This means Nigerians are probably not seeing it or certain persons are economical with the truth. Well, I can easily be proven wrong with clear definition of capital projects funded. We continuously hear of the Efficiency Unit as a “placeholder point” but no real understanding of its operations and savings that helped government fulfill regarding bureaucracy.
I am happy that with Kemi Adeosun’s argument, the Federal Government clearly sees where Nigeria’s fiscal problem lies. The critical challenge has always been the size of public revenues, too low for a country of our population and economic size. This is why we must not fetishize our debt-to-GDP numbers currently at 17.1%. That Nigeria has a huge GDP and has not been able to maximize public revenues from it attest to the poor appraisal of the current GDP structure or the approach we have taken that poorly discourage tax payments. From 29% debt-to-revenue ratio in 2014, the Federal Government has moved to 44.7% in 2016. This means that from every 100 Naira that FG receives, it spends 44 Naira on servicing debts. In a recent Pew Research study, it was stated that as at 2015, Brazil spent 42% of its revenue to service debts, being the highest in the world. This shows that while Nigerian debt size might be low, the cost of servicing debt is high among its peers. We must not fall for low debt-to-GDP figures; it is the single incomplete story. Bond interests have not toppled 16% in past year, and the badge that the Nigerian government flashes is that portfolio investors now savor our sweet debt. Who would not with cool interest rates and guaranteed exchange rate exits? The Nigerian government is running a cool social security for the Nigerians who can afford its debt, distorting incentives for the growth of private capital.
It is also unfortunate that FG is also crowding the banks of retail savers launching bond issuance capped at 12-13%. This excludes its Federal Government debt to CBN that has risen from N866bn in February 2015 to N5.189tn as at July 2017. Imagine a scenario at when there are multiple options of bonds and treasury bills at tax and risk-free rates, which bank would borrow to the private sector? In the 2016 Budget Implementation Report by the Budget office, it was stated that “Credit to government grew by 27.44% when compared with the end September 2016 figure of N3.66 trillion….Credit to the private sector (Cp) slumped by 2.93% to ₦21.98 trillion at end-December 2016 from ₦22.65 trillion at end-September 2016 indicating crowding out .”
Think of a country with the debt to the government at a faster pace than credit to the private sector that also needs private capital to reach growth rates of 7% in 2020 as stated in its Economic Recovery and Growth Capital (ERGP). It is also important that government rates have been private lending benchmark in Nigeria now around 25%. With this administration, the only business in town as been government. This administration made a chore out of commissioning private plants but underneath the numbers is a frustrated Nigerian who can’t get capital from the bank because fiscal management have disincentivized this. This is why conversations of debt should not be in size. It is how does FG reduce the cost of borrowing and most especially the domestic offerings that now touches every upper and middle class bracket of the society.
Nigeria’s debt service costs will reach N1.6tn in 2017, closing on its personnel costs of N1.8tn, this is the worry that should be triggering debates on well-structured quantitative easing not government out-borrowing everyone in the space. The current approach of substituting local debt with dollar-denominated debt is also faulty. What should be the purpose of raising external debt? With oil being our main foreign earner at 95% of receipts, is Nigeria not supposed to be borrowing for infrastructure or making investments to correct this imbalance that puts Nigerian currency on a wrong footing every time that oil markets go into a dip?
As stated in the Economic Growth Recovery Plan “Nigeria’s peers raise an average 16 per cent of GDP from non-resource taxes; Nigeria raises just 3 per cent (2015).” The plan also states a target to “increase tax to GDP ratio from the current 6 per cent to 15 per cent during the period.” With a targeted GDP of N137.331tn in 2020, we are talking about tax revenues of N20tn, which is nearly eight times the current total non-oil revenue taxes. This means Nigeria needs to at least multiply its taxes eight times to meet the 2020 target. Despite the efforts shown by Kemi Adeosun in the piece, it shows that it will always be inadequate without a proper reflection on why do we have a huge GDP but little taxes? What is the structure of the GDP that makes it impossible to collect taxes? Has the Nigerian government shown enough faith in the management of public taxes that make it more deserving? These are the conversations that need to be honked because the current approach is a reflection of growth rates in the past and shows that without robust thinking our public revenues will not rise.
I believe the debt debate is rooted in the fact that Nigerian government is taking the escapist approach, racking up debt in quick numbers, rapidly forgetting where before exit of creditors. This escapist approach of taking gradual steps on revenue but giant footsteps on debt is what is being questioned. Nigerian leaders in 18 months have shopped everywhere - AfDB, World Bank, retail savers, bondholders, Eurobond, portfolio investors, Sukuk bonds, treasury bills to pay its own cost. A dive into its budget implementation reports shows that its numbers doesn’t add up such as how did Nigeria finance actual deficit of N1.02tn for 2016 after counting at bond receipts. How is FG also entitled to Paris Club refund and what is the source of the N1.64tn extra-statutory fund provided to states?
In fact, most of the projects tied to these debts especially rail do not have any known economic importance and are not fastened to the idea that such projects should be self-liquidating. They are mainly for political expediency, and this is why this debate is necessary. The Nigerian government should provide effective plumbing in raising revenues, rein on debt service costs with favor for long-term bonds as well as rates that consider private sector lending, evidently reduce overheads and administrative capital items and overall unleash transparency on every issue. Here we see monetary authorities (CBN) limiting liquidity in a bid to keep Naira at a preferred value by mopping up funds in circulation through borrowing, the fiscal authorities (government) keeps feasting on expensive debt while everyone except their bondholders leans through. The Nigerian government needs a lot of rigorous thinking as well as caution.

Seun Onigbinde is the co-founder of BudgIT. He tweets via 


Source: saharareporters.com

Deconstructing Nigeria’s Debt Narrative, By Kemi Adeosun

By: Bhodemarz on October 09, 2017 / comment : 0 , , ,


National debt is an emotive issue, as well as an economic one. The thought of saddling future generations with unserviceable debt, is not conscionable and certainly not part of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led-administration’s agenda. It is therefore, worthy of an intervention on my part to explain the history, the short-term strategy and the medium to long term outlook for our economy.

It bears repeating that anyone who thought that the Nigerian economy we inherited in 2015 was in need of minor adjustment was sadly deluded. Oil prices had plunged from a height of over US$120 to a low of US$28 per barrel, yet the country had foreign exchange reserves of US$28.34 billion (having declined by US$16 billion in the two years to June 2015 from a high of US$44.95 billion). Despite just 10 percent of the budget allocated to capital expenditure, debt had (in a period of unprecedented oil earnings) inexplicably risen from N7.9 trillion in June 2013 to N12.1 trillion in June 2015. Depending on the candour of the commentator, the outlook was at best, ‘challenging’ and at worst, ‘bleak’.
However, this administration set to work, with a vision, not just to return Nigeria to a stable economic footing, but to deliver a fundamental structural change to the economy that would reduce our exposure to crude oil. We approached this with a number of binding constraints that must be understood. One of these was that mass public sector retrenchments to create room for capital spending was not an option. Politically, it offended the principles of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and economically, it would worsen an already precarious economic situation and cause untold hardship. In light of this, an expansionary fiscal policy was adopted with an enlarged budget which would be funded in the short term, by borrowing.
As the economy recovered and returned to growth, borrowings would be systematically replaced by revenue, which is the fundamental missing piece in Nigeria’s economic jigsaw. This does not mean that we would ignore waste, which has been a core focus of our efforts. Through the implementation of the Efficiency Unit and enrolment of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), we have successfully saved N206 billion in payroll costs using technology to drive the cleansing process, with the removal of 54,000 fraudulent or erroneous entries. This was attained without the negative social impact of retrenchment.
As we put our plans together, our economic modelling team correctly forecast that in the short term, there would be an acceleration in the accumulation of debt and an increase in debt servicing costs. However, this would be ameliorated by correcting the low tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio through revenue mobilisation, releasing funds to sustain investment in capital and repaying the debt. Mobilising revenue aggressively is not advisable, nor indeed possible, in a recessed economy but as Nigeria now reverts to growth, our revenue strategy will be accelerated. This is being complimented by a medium-term debt strategy that is focusing more on external borrowings to avoid crowding out the private sector. This would also reduce the cost of debt servicing and shift the balance of our debt portfolio from short term to longer term instruments.
The subject of inherited debt must also be drawn firmly into the mainstream of this discourse. Analysts will recall that in July 2017, the Federal Executive Council (FEC), approved that N2.7 trillion of hidden liabilities would need to be addressed. These obligations include salaries, pensions, oil importation, energy bills and contractor payments, some of which date back to 2006. It is instructive to note that the recent Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, that crippled our tertiary institutions, is one of many examples of commitments made by previous administrations that were saddled on this team. ASUU’s dispute relates to an agreement reached with the federal government in 2013 (when oil prices fluctuated between US$102 and US$116 per barrel), which was not honoured. On a daily basis, previously undisclosed obligations are uncovered. The most recent of which relates to oil importation in 2014 and is currently being dimensioned – unpaid and secured by a hitherto undisclosed sovereign note. All of these, while declared public debt was increasing by N5 trillion in two years despite records highs in revenues (in relative terms) from oil sales.
This administration believes that Nigerians have a right to the truth. The figures recently released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) and much debated indicates that while total public debt in dollar terms has remained relatively stable since 2015, our debt, when denominated in naira, has increased from N12.1 trillion to N19.6 trillion. However, this belies the impact of the recent devaluation of the naira on the external obligations we inherited, which accounted for N1.63 trillion of this increase. Also, to be considered, is the effect of the compounding of debt service on the inherited domestic debt, which was largely short dated. The administration has always been transparent and the reward for transparency should not be consternation but rather, patient and informed analysis. Nigeria’s debt to GDP currently stands at 17.76 percent and compares favourably to all its peers.
This administration will continue to pursue a prudent debt strategy, tied to gross capital formation. This will be attained by driving capital expenditure in our ailing infrastructure which will in turn, unlock productivity and create the much-needed jobs. We accept that in the short term, there will be dislocations as our revenue efforts will, by definition, lag both our expenditure and debt obligations, creating a fiscal deficit. This will be particularly pronounced in the preliminary years of pursuing this strategy; however the dislocation will be mitigated by the nation’s response to the revenue effort. No economy, anywhere in the world, can deliver sustainable long-term growth, without volatility if tax revenue is at 6 percent of GDP. This must be addressed. It is not optional and the true risk to future generations of Nigerians is that they grow up in an environment where tax avoidance or evasion is viewed as acceptable. We are already seeing some performance improvement in our non-oil revenues. Particularly, year to date performance of Customs Revenue, Value Added Tax (VAT) and Companies Income Tax (CIT), is 19 percent (N408.06 from N342.79 billion), 18 percent (N634.89 from N539.46 billion) and 11 percent (N838.45 from N757.40 billion) higher respectively, when compared to the same period in 2016. This does not mean that we have succeeded. Revenue remains considerably short of our ambitions and must be increased exponentially over the coming years but it is a sign that it can be done.
It must be recalled that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has expended more on capital projects than any previous one, despite tight fiscal conditions. Our focus on capital is important as it will underpin our medium and long term needs so the impact may not be immediately felt. But there are early and encouraging signs; major construction will resume on twenty-five roads across the key road networks/sections (A1-A4), which cuts across the six geopolitical zones, following the successful raising of over N100 billion under the Sukuk debt issuance programme. Our capital releases to Power, Works and Housing in 2016, is estimated to have created 193,469 jobs, with 40,429 being direct jobs and 153,040 indirect jobs. The many thousands of staff of some of our major contractors, who had been furloughed since their last payment receipts in 2014, will attest to the impact of government policy. In agriculture, our policies on rice and fertiliser have seen the resurrection of many rice mills and blending plants and have created a new value chain in industries that were previously import driven with over 300,000 farmers fully engaged.
It must also be recalled that this administration is working harder on revenue generation than ever before. Blocking leakages, demanding efficiency and even breaching previous ‘no-go’ areas like tax compliance for our higher earners, as there are no sacred cows. All these efforts are aimed at ensuring that Nigeria has an economy that distributes wealth and opportunity fairly among her citizens. This commitment to equity should equally provide assurance that we will never burden future generations with the responsibility for paying for past mistakes; rather, we will bequeath a vibrant and reformed economy. We are resolutely convinced, based on empirical data that our collective efforts will deliver a Nigeria that works for all Nigerians and in all global economic conditions.

Kemi Adeosun is the Nigerian minister of Finance.

Source: premiumtimesng.com

FG releases #100billion Sukuk bond proceeds for 25 road projects

By: Bhodemarz on October 06, 2017 / comment : 0 , , , ,

The Federal Government on Thursday released the proceeds of the N100 billion Sukuk bond for 25 road projects across the country.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, handed over the N100 billion proceeds cheque to the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, in Abuja.
The federal government had issued the sovereign debut Sukuk of N100 billion in September, which was successfully completed last week.
The Sukuk bond has a tenor of seven years.
Adeosun said the offer was oversubscribed to the tune of N105.87 billion.
She also said the milestone was a sign of confidence in the Nigerian economy and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The minister added that the Sukuk proceeds would unlock the potentials of Nigeria.
She said: “This is the first Sukuk bond issuance for Nigeria. It is about financial inclusion and deepening of our financial markets. The proceeds will be used to further support government capital spending for 2017 – the construction and rehabilitation of 25 key economic roads across the six geo-political zones of the country.”
“The roads will ease commuting, spur economic activities across the country and further close our infrastructural gap.”
“Each of the geo-political zones of the country is expected to receive the sum of N16.67 billion for road projects in their respective zones.
The North Central and South- South Zones accounted for five each of the 25 key economic road projects, while the North East, North West and South East have four road projects each.
“Three projects are to receive funding from the Sovereign Sukuk proceeds in the South West Zone.”
Earlier, Fashola commended the Finance Minister, the Director-General of Debt Management Office, Ms. Patience Oniha and the financial advisers for the bond issuance for their painstaking efforts aimed at realising the milestone.

He assured the ministry’s contractors that the federal government was committed to the funding of its infrastructural projects across the country.

Source: thenationonlineng.net
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