Abuja Chamber wants FG to provide documents, borrowing plan for $30bn loan

 

Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) wants the Federal Government to provide all necessary documents relating to the $30 billion proposed borrowing plan, which will enable the National Assembly support the plan.

The Chamber, while expressing optimism that the proposed borrowing plan if prudently applied to key infrastructure projects such as power, railway and roads, among others, has the capacity to impact on the economy and even stimulate economic recovery of the government.

Tony Ejinkonye, president of the Chamber, in a statement over the weekend, said external borrowing for prudent spending was a good option for Nigeria, adding that it would stimulate the economy, create jobs, generate income to pay the loans and thus would not be a burden as pessimists speculate.

From media reports, we understand that the “Senate threw out President Muhammadu Buhari’s request for external loan of $29.96 billion to execute key infrastructural projects across the country between 2016 and 2018, because the letter conveying it was not accompanied by a borrowing plan.

“We commend the government on the recovered assets and encourage them not to relent in the efforts to recover the other assets. However, because the process of recovering these assets is laborious and time consuming, they cannot concentrate on recovering of loot alone,” Ejinkonye said in the statement.

It would be recalled that the National Assembly had told the Executive to go and re-present the borrowing plan and come up with more details of what the funds would be applied into, to allow them a critical look at it.

Meanwhile, most experts had argued that to exit economic recession, government could either increase spending or cut down on tax.

This is so because by increasing government spending, idle production output is saved and thus sustains the production activities.

Some industry watchers had also said that the foundation of Nigeria’s economic woe was associated with the scarcity of foreign exchange, on account of declined crude oil prices over the past year, and until we develop a means to earn more foreign exchange our economic woes might even worsen.