Oyedele: No Secret Spending Outside Budgetary Approval
Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja
The federal government has debunked recent position of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the attendant public commentary that it spent approximately two per rcent of gross domestic product (GDP) or over ₦8 trillion outside approved budgets.The rebuttal by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele followed the recent Article IV Consultation Report on Nigeria as well as the disclosure by the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, that Nigeria left public spending, equivalent to about 2 per cent of GDP unreported in recent official budgets, thereby obscuring the country’s true financing needs and making the fiscal deficit appear smaller than it actually was.
Ebeke, said, “So far we think that there are about two per cent of GDP of expenditure that were not reported that should be reported and should be recorded, so that this statistical discrepancy will disappear.”
Following the IMF’s position, some leading political figures in the country, including the former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to probe the allegation that the federal government omitted public spending worth two per cent of GDP from recent budgets.
