Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for president, has declared that if he wins the general election on February 25, 2023, fiscal policy will be the main focus of his administration.
The former governor of Lagos State recently stated during a meeting with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) that within his first 100 days in office, he would assemble a team of technocrats to work alongside him in running the government. He also stated that PMS subsidies would be completely eliminated and instead allocated to more deserving projects like housing, rails, roads, and infrastructural renewal.
“Fiscal policy will be the main driver of our reforms as monetary policy is a weaker and less effective instrument. Henceforth, we will not tie our budget to Dollar- denominated oil revenues
“We will tie our budget to the projected spending levels that will push the annual growth rate above 10%, and this will inadvertently reduce the unemployment rate and the economy will be doubled in seven years.
“On electricity, generation and transmission will be decentralised 100%, allowing for investors to explore all sources of energy and more lucrative tariff system for better ROI for investors,” he said.
The APC presidential candidate promised that his government would relax the restrictions on import and foreign exchange, which he said, has increased smuggling and round tripping that has stifled the economy thus far.
In continuation of this, Tinubu stated that his government would move to a unified exchange rate regime, thereby cutting the official and black market dichotomy.
“On unemployment for our teeming youths, we intend to focus more on the creative sector music, fashion and movies because this sector has the tendencies of reducing unemployment by 30 to 40%.
“To achieve this, the legal environment will be created to address piracy and copyright issues and give backing to the much-needed private sector funding to boost the sector, while the government will be providing the hard infrastructure needs to generate millions of jobs and foreign exchange for the country,” he said.
Tinubu explained that despite passing the Petroleum Industry Act in 2021, the nation has experienced “dwindling revenues from oil owing to oil theft and vandalisation. Reforms will be made to ensure 100% implementation of PIA by removing bottlenecks and working in a more coordinated manner using technology to drive the reforms.”
According to Tinubu, “Closing fiscal gaps, promoting domestic revenue mobilisation, implementing tax reforms, curbing institutionised corruption, optimising budget, and streamlining bureaucracy will be imperative for a new Nigeria.”
