Federal Government is to benefit from a $500 million loan facility from the World Bank for the Human Capital Opportunities for Prosperity and Equity (HOPE) project in the country.

Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, made this known during a courtesy visit on him by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mission Chief for Nigeria, Mr. Axel Schimmelpfennig

The loan facility, according to the minister, will increase the availability and effectiveness for financing for basic education and primary health care in the various states of the federation.

The fund, he said, will enhance transparency and accountability for basic education and primary health care in addition to improving recruitments, deployments and better performance management of teachers.

While appreciating the support of the World Bank, Bagudu elucidated that the Nigerian Constitution is the legal framework that provides the rules and procedures that guides the budget process in addition to empowering the federal and state governments to make expenditures in the preceding year for the purpose of meeting expenditure necessary to carry on the services of the government.

“This expenditure can continue for a period not exceeding six months or until the coming into operation of the law as can be seen on Chapter 5, Part 2 Section 122 of the Nigerian Constitution” he said

Bagudu explained further that the reforms embarked on by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration were aimed at developing and implementing economic and tax reforms that will guarantee more functional Public Financial Management (PFM) systems in the country.

“The economic reforms are necessary decisions to put the Nigerian economy on the right track”he explained

He assured the IMF Team that though Nigeria is experiencing a number of challenges such as hardship of citizens as a result of removal of fuel subsidy, floating of foreign exchange, electricity reforms that distributed citizens into bands, Nigeria is on course to economic recovery.

In a statement, the minister appreciated the willingness of the IMF to support Nigeria but however called for more support in the area of resource mobilisation from multinational partners in order for government to provide developments in all sectors of the economy.

Earlier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mission Chief for Nigeria, Mr. Axel Schimmelpfennig said he was in the country to have interactions with the minister on the workings of the Nigerian budgeting process with particular emphasis on the simultaneous implementation of the 2023/2024 budgets and supplementary budgets in the same year in preparation for the publication of the 2025 annual report of the World Bank.

Schimmelpfennig welcomed the tax reforms of the federal government as increased revenue generation will ensure more developments for Nigerian citizens and thus promised the country of more IMF support for Nigeria’s developmental needs.

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Dr. Vitalis Emeka Obi, briefed the team on the ministry’s role in co-ordinating Nigeria’s development planning and budgeting processes. The Permanent Secretary emphasised that 2025 promises to be a year of more rapid investments.

DailySun

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, says the new Port Harcourt refinery is over 90 per cent completed.

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, stated this on Monday when labour leaders from the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, visited the facility in Rivers State.

Gatekeeper recalls that After a long delay involving at least seven missed deadlines, NNPC finally activated the 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) phase one of the Port Harcourt oil refinery.

The rehabilitation process for the total 210,000 bpd refinery began in 2021 after the federal government secured a $1.5 billion contract to fix the facility, which had been left decrepit for years.

NNPC had initially failed to make public the litres of petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and naphtha the refinery will roll out, in negation of global best practices.

However, citing public criticism, the national oil company later said it was refining 1.4 million litres of petrol per day, an extremely low figure by all estimations.

Watch the video below:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1866126343626502510

The Centre for Promotion of Private Enterprise, CPPE, has explained that the Naira has recorded massive gains against the dollar in the past weeks due to improvements in the country’s external reserves and interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The Director of CPPE, Muda Yusuf, disclosed this in a statement on Sunday.

His comments come as the Naira gained N127 to close at N1,535 per dollar on Friday last week compared to N1,660 against the dollar last week Monday.

Reacting to the significant gain of Naira at the FX market, CPPE attributed it to the rise in Nigeria’s external reserves to over $40 billion in the last few days.

Additionally, the economic think tank group said that the CBN’s recent introduction of the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS) has contributed to the Naira’s stability in the FX market.

“You can ascribe this to several issues. First, we have seen an improvement in our reserves, which reached the $40bn mark a few weeks ago, and that implies that the CBN has more power to intervene in the market, and in truth, the CBN has been intervening in the market to stabilise the currency.

I would like to observe that in the last five months or so, we have seen relative stability in the naira exchange rate, which is a welcome development.

“Now, we are beginning to see a strengthening of the currency, so the level of our reserves has contributed to this as it elevates the confidence of foreign investors.

“Then, in the last few months, as a result of reforms in the foreign exchange market, we are seeing a consistent improvement in autonomous foreign exchange inflow in the country, especially from the international money transfer operators.”