The various intervention programmes initiated by the federal government to manage the fallout of the Covid19 pandemic have gulped about N1.5 trillion.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this at a press briefing in Abuja.
This is just as she expressed optimism that with favourable global economic conditions expected as economic activities and normalcy return across major economic sectors, and local conditions continue to improve to allow business activities, the Nigerian economy was on course to more inclusive growth.
According to her, the latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which showed a 5.01 per cent growth for the economy in the second quarter of 2021 (Q2 2021) was an indication that business and commercial activities had fully returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Ahmed noted that if necessary economic measures and policies are put in place and sectors such as agriculture are improved upon, the economy had the potential to maintain a five per cent growth rate in the third quarter (Q3) of the year.
On borrowing, the minister said the federal government was being responsible in its actions, pointing out that “if we don’t invest now, we will regret it later.”
Statistician-general of the federation, Simon Harry, who was also at the briefing, said what the federal government needs to do is to improve and sustain its revenue drive.
“From all that is happening now and the improvement of funding of this year’s budget, the third quarter of this year is going to record a tremendous success.
“In managing an economy, you don’t expect magic if there is no adequate funding of the economy. So far, so good, this year has been recording timely releases of budgetary allocations for all MDAs and we expect that to have multiplier effects on other sectors of the economy. So, what we need to do to encourage this is to look at other sectors that are not performing; for instance, in Q2, agriculture’s performance was not encouraging.”
