Kemi Adeosun, minister of
finance, says Nigeria does not need the World Bank to monitor its debt.
Speaking with journalists on the
sidelines of the ongoing Spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank Group in Washington D.C, Adeosun said Nigeria has the Debt
Management Office (DMO), various committees and 185 million citizens as
monitors.
She was reacting to the World
Bank’s comments on helping countries monitor their debt levels.
“We don’t need the World Bank if
they want to come and help us, great but we don’t need them,” she said.
The minister added that current
administration has no apologies for obtaining loans to shorten the recession
that ended last year.
In 2016, Nigeria’s economy
slipped into its worst recession in 29 years and the government deployed
various debt instruments like Eurobonds, Savings bond and Sukuk to raise funds.
“There were two options; one was
cut back, lay people off and wait for oil prices to recover or be more
aggressive, expand your budget, take on more debts and invest in infrastructure
in hope that you will get growth going to develop more revenue,” she said.
“We’ve expanded our budget, we
pumped money into the economy, we made sure recession was not prolonged. We are
now back into growth, we need to accelerate that growth and focus on revenue
mobilization which in turn will reduce our debt pressures.
“If we were still in recession,
we’d have far bigger problems. I think what people haven’t realised is how much
work had to be done to make sure that that recession was as short as possible
because that would have caused real pain for the people. We shortened it, we
had to borrow to do so and we make no apologies for that.”
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