Finance minister Edun lays out clearer ways to halve 34.80% inflation rate ending 2025
Now, the question of how inflation will reach 15 percent in the next eleven months is being asked. According to Minister Edun, farming large and bringing forth massive food yields will be part of the offensive, although that has been said many times before.
In Nigeria’s 2025 Appropriation Bill, pegged at the sum of ₦47.9trillion when it was presented to the National Assembly last month on Wednesday 18 December, precisely ₦13.51billion of the amount will go to the country’s finance ministry, hence the reason its head, Mr Dele Edun had to appear before a Senate sub-committee sieving through the proposal. Appearing there, he needed to justify if quite a huge chunk of investment was exactly what his ministry should be getting although he opted to highlight further down how his nation’s budget could help slash the current 34.80 percent inflation rate by more than half of the current value. So, how will that all work?
Mr Edun saw this possibility of a drastic change while making a pitch at the parliament complex in Abuja yesterday. He thinks the Central Bank of Nigeria’s projection of an extremely positive transit for inflation figures this year is feasible.
Much of the work that caters to that outcome is already underway, says the Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy while still speaking to the Senate Committee on Finance that invited him for the brief. It is all part of the process of necessary scrutiny before the proposed budget is passed.
One of the committee members is Senator Sani Musa, the chairman urging purposeful spending in government ministries, departments and agencies to bring about the efficiency that loads of Nigerians require right now to give their lives a lift.
Now, the question of how inflation will reach 15 percent in the next eleven months is being asked. According to Minister Edun, farming large and bringing forth massive food yields will be part of the offensive, although that has been said many times before.
Even if monetary policy helps to try to bring down inflation, however, on the fiscal side, it is important that we contribute to lower inflation, not just by really squeezing demand, but by increasing supply.
Increasing [the] supply of food is one of the major commitments that is already laid out, we are having a dry season harvest now, and we have mobilised 250,000 farmers to be able to produce 750,000 metric pounds of assorted grains from the dry season farming.
Long before Wale Edun’s presentation before the Senators happened, the BBC World Service Newsday presenter Catherine Byaruhanga had had access to him. When he appeared on the breakfast radio programme last week, a question was put to the minister concerning whether he empathised with Nigerians suffering the bites that have emerged because of President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies since he gained power in May 2023 and the response was equally optimistic.
On Monday 20 January with the Senate’s finance committee, it was like being on the radio all over again the way he defended the president’s direction of taking the country. The government’s spending and prioritisation of its projects will be on major infrastructure, including digital infrastructure and fibre optics to make the economy more productive so that it can grow, create jobs, and reduce poverty, which is the overall goal of President Bola Tinubu.
In 2021, Mr Tinubu’s predecessor had the notion of the Decade of Gas, which was supposed to be a journey spanning the next nine years where all aspects of the Nigerian economy that require energy for transportation will be powered with compressed natural gas (CNG).
Nigeria currently has over 209 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of proven natural gas reserves and the country believes this can be utilised to unlock significant economic growth and create jobs in the country.
Gas is meant to be a much cheaper substitute for premium motor spirit or diesel, so massive adoption of CNG is being encouraged under the current administration.
Finance minister Wale Edun back in the Senate sub-committee meeting room dived into what this could all mean to the topic of bringing inflation down. These are all interventions to ameliorate the situation of the relatively high cost of living, which is coming down and is predicted to come down as we have said earlier today.
Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.
