Oil Price Drop: FG Moves To Rejig Economy

Following the dwin
dling global oil prices in recent times, the federal government has announced plans to cushion the effect on the economy.
The Miniser of Finance and coordinating Minister of the economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala while speaking on the Nigeria Television Authority Programme, (NTA), “Good Morning Nigerian on Thursday said the government was taking a scenario based approach.
She said such developed scenarios include $70 per barrel, $65 per barrel and at $60 even as she said the federal government was not stopping at $73 per barrel.
According to the minister, the government has a bundle of measures aimed at raising more revenue which include cutting expenditures of both recurrent and a little bit of waste in the short term.
Okonjo-Iweala further explained that even in the medium term, government has to look at the structuring and public expenditure to take out in efficiencies and duplications amongst others.
She said such measures would enable the government weather the impending storm.
On the possibility of involving multinational firms in listing on the capital market, the finance boss said the ministry was already working with the ministry of communications, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in that direction.
“We already have a working group that is talking to big companies like MTN and other telecommunications and consumer goods industries.
“Even in the power sector and oil and gas, we are trying to persuade them to list because this is the way we have driven our capital market and we are working on it” she said.
She opined that the government has been nice to the companies in terms of encouragement.
“We expect that momentarily we are being very nice about it to give them encouragement and incentives” she said.
However, Okonjo-Iweala said should the companies refuse to get the message, the government would employ other means to get them into listing.