Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the IMF/World Bank, on Friday, explained why the Federal Government is not excited about calls to apply for loan facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tackle the economic challenges Nigeria is facing due to the slump in global oil prices.
Other speakers at the event included IMF Deputy Managing Director Mitsuhiro Furusawa and Rwanda Finance Minister Claver Gatete.
The Minister, who was a speaker at a panel discussion on Africa titled: “Sub-Saharan Africa: Just a Rough Patch,” said Nigeria is adapting to its new realities and it is implementing fiscal policies to steer the country back on track for stable growth with a diversified economy. The policies and investment, according to her, should enable Nigeria to show positive growth in 2017.
Adeosun emphasized that what the country is passing through is surmountable, adding that government is already applying a cocktail of measures to address the problem.
“Nigeria is not sick and even if we are, we have our own local remedy,” the Minister said, in an apparent response to a question on why the government has refused to apply for IMF loans.
Noting that the real vulnerability in the Nigerian economy is over-dependence on a single source of revenue, oil, she said, “We have resolved to build resilience into the country’s economy to hedge against future oil shocks. This is because dependence on oil brings about vulnerability and laziness. So we are doing a combination of things to diversify our economy, with revenue mobilization to enable sufficient investment in developing the non-oil sectors.” (Culled from Vanguard)
