Mohammed Shosanya
The Federal Government will float a $500 million bond in few weeks to attract Diaspora Nigerians and enable Nigerians who have funds abroad to bring their funds homes for investment, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Wale Edun,has said.
The Minister,who stated this while addressing the media on the Half Year Performance of the economy in Abuja, said President Bola Tinubu’s bold reforms are yielding positive results for the economy.
He also disclosed that the current administration has exited Ways and Means (borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria) within its first year in office.
He said that Nigerians would be better for it when the expected outcomes of the reforms begin to manifest productively.
Stressing that after overcoming the transparency challenges of the Cash Transfer Programme of the Social Investment initiative, the Cash Transfers had resumed with about 600,000 beneficiaries having been recently covered.
He said the President was concerned about the welfare of ordinary Nigerians, even as he admitted that the reform policies have created immediate difficulties for the citizens.
On the impact of government reforms, Edun said Nigeria now stands at a grid position globally to attract massive investments as a result of the efforts of government, adding; “I think we already can see macro economic stability. We have stable exchange rate.
The budget deficits as I will show is reducing, the trade balance that measures how we are doing internationally is positive, the investment flows are positive.
According to him, “and there has been a root and branch reconfiguration of the finances of the federal government to achieve increased revenue across the board, as well as to achieve greater expenditure control.”
Also describing the removal of fuel subsidy as “technical”, Edun said there were impediments to the implementation of the recent Supreme Court judgment on direct payment federation allocations to the Local Government Councils.
