The Federal Government says it is in the process of conducting an audit of the N22.7 trillion Ways and Means loan approved by the former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, made this known on Tuesday, at the Public Wealth Management Conference in Abuja.
The minister who expressed the determination of the federal government to stem stem liquidity, noted that the Central Bank has led the way in pointing out that the ways and means have to be tailed down and eliminated “and that is what we agree with.”
“We are going in that direction, there was an inherited amount of N22.7trn in backlogs. We are auditing it and it is like when I am ready to pay a loan from a bank and I ask for an audit before finding the agreed sum to pay.
“But apart from that, how do you get your ways and means down? We have to get revenues up and expenditure reduced as much as possible,” the minister added.
He decried the surge in food and commodity prices in the country, saying that President Bola Tinubu’s administration inherited it from the previous government.
Edun, however, reiterated the government’s commitment to bringing down food prices and tackling the nation’s high inflation rate.
The minister said that the federal government was not unaware of the sufferings of Nigerians and measures, including the release of 42,000 metric tons of grains and another 60,000 metric tons to be released soon, had been put in place to alleviate their sufferings.