The two-day National Economic Council (NEC) retreat at the conference hall of the Presidential Villa, has ended.
The retreat was chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo along with the 36 Governors and ministers of the Federal Republic.
The sum of N350 billion will be injected into the Nigerian economy in order to stimulate the system bearing in mind the drop in oil price.
Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun briefed newsmen at the end of the retreat. Adeosun said government will spend mostly on job creation and capital projects.
“From the Federal Ministry of Finance in anticipation of the approval of the budget, we have virtually lined up about N350billion which we would be pumping into the Nigerian economy in the forthcoming months.
“We explained our rationale and the processes that we have put in place, safeguards to ensure that this money actually achieve the desired objective, which is to stimulate the economy.
“We are already discussing with some of the contractors who will be paid these monies and the objectives from the overall criteria is how many Nigerians would be re-engaged.
“We are specifically looking at contractors who have laid off staff and how many Nigerians are you going to put back to work as a result of this money that we are planning to release.
“We believe this would bring significant economic activity,” she said.
The money is expected to come from the 2016 budget when approved and will be spent in the next quarter. The Senate President, Bukola Saraki has promised that the Budget will be passed this week. Nigerians go on Easter holidays between the 25th -28th of March 2015 indicating that the budget may be passed on Thursday March 24th. Nigeria currently faces a stagflation with inflation rate rising and GDP rate dropping. With the economy in tailspin analysts believe the delay in passing the budget has starved critical sectors in the economy of funds required to boost spending.
This headline is misleading. N350 billion is being paid to contractors who are going to put people back to work on their payrolls. It’s money that’s going to trickle down to the workforce.