Udo Udoma, minister of budget and planning, says Nigerians will start feeling the impact of the 2016 budget from the third quarter of the year.
Addressing state house correspondents at the end of the federal executive council (FEC) meeting at the presidential villa, Udoma expressed confidence that the economy will pick up.
He said development takes time to materalise, pointing out that it is not immediately after a budget is passed that people start seeing results.
“The decision that we took to address that problem is to reflate the economy and the budget was aimed to achieve that and that is why you have in the budget a plan to spend a large amount of money on infrastructure but as you know the budget was only recently passed,” he said.
“It takes time for the spending to be released and to hit the economy and to begin to see the impact. So we have a plan, we know the situation we are in right now and we have a plan to get out of the situation.
“It is just that at this particular point in time we expected this trajectory because the releases will only start kicking in so that by the third quarter we will start seeing the impact of what we are doing to reflate the economy.”
The minister said the directive given to the private sector not to disengage workers is in the interest of the companies because those who they intend to dismiss would be needed when the economy takes shape.
“With regards to the plea to the private sector not to sack workers, it is because we know that by the time the economy picks up, they will need those people again,” he said.
“We know the economy is going to pick up and we are confident about that. That is because of our plan, the plan was conceived because we knew that this was the trajectory we will move into.
“I will give you an indication of some of those things in the plan. For agriculture for instance, we plan to be self sufficient in rice within a certain number of years, in wheat within a certain number of years.
“Indeed the vice-president has just set up a task force headed by the governor of Kebbi state to realise that. So we are implementing the plan one by one.”
Udoma said there is a plan to move Nigeria up 20 places in terms of ease in doing businesses.
TheCable
