Nigeria to introduce bill to reduce government borrowing

The Nigerian government is set to introduce a bill which will help reduce future borrowing by the country.

The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun, made the announcement on Monday.

Edun said this during the ongoing Public Wealth Management Conference organised by the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI).

“As a step towards reducing future government borrowing, the Federal Government plans to introduce a bill to the National Assembly shortly,” he said.

According to him, this bill will also seek approval to eliminate all unnecessary taxes and levies from Nigeria’s tax system.

He also announced the government’s plan to audit the N23 trillion owed in Ways and Means, the money that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) lends to the Federal Government in the meantime to augment spending until they come up with the revenue.

According to Edun, the Federal Government decided to conduct an audit of the N23 trillion debt because it has been pending for some time.

“We have to stem liquidity. 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,” Edun said.

“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 expenditures reduced as much as possible.”