By Sunday Ani
Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has stated that fiscal policy would form the fulcrum of his government’s economic policy if he is elected into office in the February 25, 2023 general elections.
Speaking during an engagement with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) recently, the former Lagos State governor said that in his first 100 days in office, he would assemble a team of technocrats to run the government with him. He added that subsidy would be removed 100 percent on PMS and redirected into more worthy ventures, such as housing, rails, roads, and infrastructural renewal.
“Fiscal policy will be the main driver of our reforms as monetary policy is a weaker and less effective instrument. Henceforth, we will not tie our budget to dollar denominated oil revenues
“We will tie our budget to the projected spending levels that will push the annual growth rate above 10 percent, and this will inadvertently reduce the unemployment rate and the economy will be doubled in seven years.
“On electricity, generation and transmission will be decentralised 100 percent, allowing for investors to explore all sources of energy and more lucrative tariff system for better ROI for investors,” he said.
He also promised that his government would relax the restrictions on import and foreign exchange, which he said has increased smuggling and round tripping that has stifled the economy thus far.
In this regard, he noted that his government would move to a unified exchange rate regime, thereby cutting the official and black market dichotomy.
“On unemployment for our teeming youths, we intend to focus more on the creative sector – music, fashion and movies because this sector has the tendencies to reduce unemployment by 30 to 40 percent.
“To achieve this, the legal environment will be created to address piracy and copyright issues and give backing to the much needed private sector funding to boost the sector, while the government will be providing the hard infrastructure needs to generate millions of jobs and foreign exchange for the country,” he said.
Tinubu lamented that despite passing the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021, the nation was still experiencing dwindling revenues from oil owing to oil theft and vandalisation. “Reforms will be made to ensure 100 percent implementation of PIA by removing bottlenecks and working in a more coordinated manner using technology to drive the reforms,” he added.
According to him, “Closing fiscal gaps, promoting domestic revenue mobilisation, implementing tax reforms, curbing institutionised corruption, optimising budget, and streamlining bureaucracy will be imperative for a new Nigeria.”
