Amaechi Ogbonna and Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Washington DC
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has said the closure of the country’s borders was not for revenue generation.
She said though government is realising revenue from the closure, the main objective was to force neigbouring countries to commit to honouring bilateral agreements which they have failed to do over time.
Ahmed said this in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the ongoing IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington DC.
The minister was responding to a question on whether border closure was part of streams of revenue generation the Federal Government was considering.
Ahmed replied: “No. We needed to close the borders because we are not getting cooperation from our neighbouring countries. We have over the years committed to some alliances, bilateral agreements but our neighbours are not respecting those bilateral agreements and at this time when the President has signed Nigeria up to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), it becomes more important for us to make sure that everybody complies with the commitments that are made.
“The practices that our neighbours are engaged in are hurting our economy, hurting our local businesses and we have to make sure that that stops. That is the purpose for the closure of the border and not generating revenue. That revenues are generated is the consequence but that is not the objective. It is just to ensure compliance of the commitments that we made between ourselves and our neigbouring countries.”
Asked if there was a timeline to reopen the borders as it is hurting genuine businesses, she said: “The timeline will be when the neigbouring countries commit to comply with the commitments that we signed. We hope that at some points there will be discussions at the level of presidents where we will extract some commitments from our neigbours.”
She described as an anomaly basing budget on revenue from oil and gas, saying budgeting is supposed to be based on taxes that a country is able to generate.
“It is an anomaly for us in Nigeria that our budgets have not been focusing on revenue. What we are trying to do in 2020 is to harness the full potential of revenue mobilisation. The only increase in taxes in 2020 budget is just VAT,” Ahmed said.