Former minister of state for budget and national planning, Clem Agba, has described as sound and wise policy the decision by former President Muhammadu Buhari to borrow to fund the economy.
Mr Agba made the assertion in an interview on Tuesday in Uzanu, near Agenebode, Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo.
He asked rhetorically: “How are you going to run a country where the population is growing by the day? Are you not going to build roads, hospitals and provide basic infrastructure for the people?
“And since you don’t have the revenue, it becomes necessary to borrow.”
He said Nigeria had one of the lowest GDPs in the world and still subsidised petrol, with “nothing” left in capital expenditure.
“What is wrong about borrowing is when you are borrowing to fund consumption.
“But if you are borrowing to fund production and you have the capability to pay back, then it’s fine,” said the ex-minister.
He said Nigeria had never defaulted in its obligation to either pay interest on loans or pay the principal when it was due.
Mr Agba explained that various measures were implemented to increase the revenue generation.
He noted that Nigeria had a serious revenue problem rather than a debt challenge.
“People don’t want to pay taxes; they avoid tax as much as possible. Ironically, that is the source for government funding,” he stated.
Mr Agba explained that “for the very first time, we hit the N10.4 trillion mark, when the federal government’s total budget in 2015 was N4.5 trillion. It showed some level of remarkable progress,”
The former minister, who said much had been done with the Customs Service, noted that “the biggest challenge was not with the system but with its personnel.”
“A lot of the officers believe that the organisation is a revenue-generating body.
“That is incorrect. Rather, they fail to realise that the organisation is a trade facilitation agency.
“They fail to realise that if they are really able to facilitate trade and the volume of trade increases, so will the revenue increase.”
He pointed out that: “But unfortunately, their focus was not to facilitate, rather it was more on revenue generation, and this reduced the volume of trade.”
(NAN)
