Give us approval to Borrow $29.9bn -President Buhari to NASS.

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Give us approval to Borrow $29.9bn -President Buhari to NASS.

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The presidency has sent a request to the House of Representatives and Senate to borrow the sum of $29.960 billion to provide infra­structure and execute its safety net programmes from 2016 to 2018.
Nigeria’s President Bu¬hari

Nigeria’s President Bu¬hari

The money, the President said, will be used to finance pro­jects with emphasis on infrastruc­ture, agriculture, health, educa­tion, water supply, growth and employment generation, pover­ty reduction through social safe­ty net programmes and govern­ance and financial management reforms among others.He said the devastated North East Zone will get the sum of $575 million from the loan.In a letter, he sent to the Na­tional Assembly on Tuesday, Bu­hari said that proposed projects and programmes will take the sum of $11.274 billion, special nation­al infrastructure projects ($10.686 billion), Euro bonds ($4.5 billion) and Federal Government budget support($3.5 billion).The President in the letter ti­tled: “Request for approval of Fed­eral Government 2016-2018 ex­ternal borrowing (rolling) plan”, said that the projects and pro­grammes in the borrowing plan were selected based on positive technical economic evaluations, as well as the contribution they will make to the socio-economic development of the country.The specific areas, according to Buhari, are employment gen­eration and poverty reduction and protection of the most vulnerable and very poor segment in the so­ciety.Buhari said that the projects and programmes will be imple­mented in all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capi­tal Territory (FCT).He said: “Considering the huge infrastructural deficit cur­rently being experienced in the country and enormous financial resources required to fill the gap in the face of dwindling resourc­es and the inability of our annu­al budgetary provision to bridge the deficit, it has become neces­sary to resort to prudent external borrowing to bridge the financing gap which will be applied to key infrastructure projects.”The President said that the entire projects earmarked for the North East Zone included Polio Eradication Support and Routine Immunisation ($125 million), community and social develop­ment project ($75million); Nige­ria States Health Programme In­vestment Project ($125 million); State Education Programme In­vestment Project ($100 million), Nigeria Youth Employment and Social Support Project ($100 mil­lion), and Fadama III Project ($50 million).President Buhari also sent an­other letter requesting for vire­ment of funds appropriated for special intervention (recurrent) and special Intervention (capita) for the funding of critical items.+The total recurrent and cap­ital fund requested by Buhari through virement is N180.839 billion.While the recurrent expend­iture requirement is N16.630 bil­lion, the capital expenditure re­quirement is N14.208 billion.While the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) gets N19.792 billion, the Amnesty Programme receives N35 billion.+“The provision for NYSC in 2016 Budget is inadequate to ca­ter for the number of corps mem­bers to be mobilised this year. In fact, an additional N8.5 billion is required to cover the backlog of 129,469 corps members who are due for call-up but will other­wise be left out until next year due to funding constraints.“The provision for Presiden­tial Initiative for the North East (N12 billion) has a balance of less than N1.5 billion and there con­tinue to be emerging challenge with the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the zone,” Bu­hari said.

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