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COVID-19: Agba tasks states on policies for quick economic recovery

In line with Federal Government’s desire to address challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, a number of state governments across the country have reviewed their 2020 budgets to align with present realities.

 

Many states have also begun to adopt measures for aggressive diversification of their revenue bases in order to reduce dependency on the diminishing allocations from the Federation Account.

 

The Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, made this known during the 11th virtual Community of Practice (CoP) meeting of Commissioners of Economic Planning, held yesterday in Abuja. It had as its theme: “COVID-19: Strategies for quick Recovery of the Economy.”

 

Agba noted that though there had been marginal increase in the price of crude oil in the international market, the cut in daily production quota by OPEC still dwarfed the much-required revenue needed to rejig the weakened economy.

 

The minister also said that as a result of the rising rate of infections, the continuous global meltdown, the increasing unemployment on account of layoffs in all sectors of economy, the economic growth could contract to about -8.9 per cent in 2020, in the worstcase scenario, and -4.45 in the best-case scenario,

 

without any form of stimulus to the economy. He stated that in order to prevent a potential deep recession, and accelerate quick recovery of the economy, the Federal Government has approved the total stimulus package of N2.3 trillion. This package, according to Agba, consisted of N500billion FGN interventions fund, N1.2trillion CBN intervention funds, N334billion BoI/Bilateral/Multilateral interventions and additional FGN support of N300billion

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