Nigeria Is Not Broke - Okonjo Iweala
Okonjo-Iweala, who stated this on Tuesday at the 2014 Ministerial Platform said in spite of the reduction of oil price in the international market, Nigeria has managed to keep things going, according to NAN.
According to Okonjo-Iweala: “It is like people are trying to force Nigeria into brokerage. Nigeria is a country that depends on a stream of income”.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said that presently, government had been budgeting below the existing oil price to help build buffers in case of uncertainty.
“We are operating an economy that depends on a product that fluctuates with oil price and we don’t have the right to control the price”.
Okonjo-Iweala who said that presently Nigeria was faced with fluctuations in quantity and price of oil, adding that it had affected the amount paid into government coffers.
“Does that mean that the country is broke? We still have resources that we depend on; we still have the ability to tax.“Sometimes, things need to be a little tighter, easier and we just have to weather it and manage ourselves but that does not amount to the country being broke.’’
The Minister who stated Nigeria can only be said is broke if government was not able to pay salaries to people and continue to manage which she noted that the country hadn’t gotten to that level yet.
Okonjo Iweala, however, urged Nigerians to bear with the nature of the economy, adding that it was the reason every effort was challenged to ensure the economy was diversified.
Recall, that earlier this year, despite Nigeria being named Africa’s number one largest economy, following it’s increased Gross Domestic Product (GDP), however in April the World Bank ranked Nigeria as the third poorest country in the world.
