The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said on Tuesday that the Federal Government spent N165 billion monthly on salaries.
Adeosun, who spoke at a Town Hall/Policy
Dialogue for Good Governance organised by the Alumni Association of the
National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, said there were 1.2
million public servants in the civil service when President Muhammadu
Buhari government came into power.
She added that the government had been
able to save N8 billion from the monthly pay roll of public servants due
to various strategies introduced to block loopholes.
The minister said that the country’s
present economic challenges was not peculiar to Nigeria, adding that the
economies of most western countries were built out of their diversity.
She said, “Change can be extremely painful, but we must change.’’
She further added that to come out of
the present economic challenges, there was the need for financial
discipline as well as investing in capital to attract private capital
investors.
Adeosun said the FG had no choice than
to borrow to invest in the country’s infrastructure, explaining that
this was the only way to create jobs.
“We have a very conservative borrowing programme; we will borrow conservatively so we don’t burden the future generation.
“We must borrow, not like in the past
when loans were taken to pay salaries; we will this time, borrow to
invest and build our infrastructures.’’
The meeting, which was attended by the
Ministers of Agriculture and Rural Development, Power, Works and
Housing, Finance, Information and Culture, Budget and National Planning
and Foreign Affairs, was the sixth in the series of town hall meetings.
The ministers took time to brief the
audience on what the Federal Government was doing in their various
ministries to address the country`s challenges and improve the economy.
Also, traditional rulers, members of the Diplomatic Corps and Civil Society Organisations, among others, attended the meeting.
NAN
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