Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said that Lagos state will require a minimum of a substantial N7 trillion to provide infrastructural projects and other amenities in its 2024 fiscal year.
Sanwo-Olu said this on Friday, during the eighth Lagos Corporate Assembly, a business forum, tagged: ”Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu Meets Business with Community (BOS Meets with Business Community),” held at the Lagos House, Ikeja.
He reassured stakeholders that, notwithstanding global business challenges, the government remained focused on ensuring the ease of doing business in the state.
He also expressed his administration’s readiness to ensure ease of doing business despite current global challenges.
He said:
- “Reports gathered from Ministries, Departments and Agencies shows that if we have the resources, at least N7 trillion will be needed for the year 2024 budget to meet the state’s infrastructural challenges and other basic amenities. This proves that our proposed N2 trillion budget for 2024 is far from it.
- “That is one of the challenges we are having presently. We want to fix roads and do it rightly. We need to scale up with modern technology and put in place enduring policies. We didn’t anticipate the current inflationary rate, our focus is on how to meet the demands of our people amidst speculative market.
- “We are where we are today and if we don’t get it right, it will have dire consequences on our country. But we can’t give excuses, we need to work together. We are running against time. I have a political timeline am working with and we can’t afford to fail.
- “We will need to work together and identify the way forward. We should be able to solve some of our challenges through your ideas and submissions. We must let the MSMEs breathe for a sustainable economy, through friendly policies.”
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On her part, Mrs. Folashade Ambrose-Medebem, the commissioner for Commerce, Cooperative, Trade, and Investment, emphasized the significance of the corporate assembly as a vital forum for public-private sector collaboration.
It serves as a platform for meaningful interaction between the government and the business community, fostering discussions on key matters essential for the state’s industrial and commercial development.
Ambrose-Medebem promised that all issues raised at the last edition had been addressed adequately by MDAs relevant to improving business in the state.
She added:
- “The T.H.E.M.E.S Plus Development Agenda was conceived as a comprehensive strategic document to guide the Sanwo-Olu administration in the areas of policy formulation, development, implementation and evaluation against set parameters, to aggressively transform the state to a modern economy and meet the yearning and aspirations of all stakeholders, including the business community.
- “As a responsive and responsible government, we recognise that ensuring ease of doing business is key to the state’s economic growth and development. This is why the administration, through the implementation of various reforms, prioritised the provision of a friendly environment that would support existing businesses while attracting more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
- “The outcome of the reforms includes, among others, improved time in the issuance of planning permits (down to 10 days for players in the built sector). This was achieved following series of innovations introduced by this administration to make the process seamless, attractive and friendly.”
Is this amount the actual or padded version please. The only thing we seem to have learnt from international aid and finance organisations is how to throw around wild projections and beautiful targeted outcomes with little or no commitment to actualizing them.
Padded? N7 trillion is barely in the range of $5-6 billion.
Lagos obviously needs much more than that to transform into the modern city it aspires to. Not to compare apples with oranges, but NYC (8 million population, with 18m in the metropolitan area) has a budget of $107 billion ($114 billion projected for 2024 amidst budget cuts). Thus, the question should be whether Lagos (estimated 25 million population) requires N7 trillion, but whether/how it can raise such an amount. IMHO, sadly it cannot.