FG to Audit the N23 Trillion Debt Acquired From CBN by Buhari Administration
The Federal Government is to audit the N23 trillion Way and Means debt obtained by the Buhari administration from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Finance and Coordination Minister, Wale Edun announced the move during the public wealth management conference on Tuesday in Abuja.
He explained that the proposed audit would address the complexities surrounding the debt.
Edun also said that a bill would be sent to the national assembly by the presidency seeking the cancellation of all taxes and levies which constitute a nuisance to the country’s tax system.
According to the minister, the bill was part of a broader strategy to reduce the federal government’s dependence on ways and means from the CBN to finance the budget deficit.
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The government, Edun added, will pursue policies that will allow it to harvest revenue in real-time from government-owned enterprises and Corporate entities.
Edun said We have to stem liquidity. The Central Bank has led the way in pointing out that the ways and means have to be tailed down and eliminated and that is what we agree with.
We are going in that direction, there was an inherited amount of N22.7trn in backlogs. We are auditing it and it is like when I am ready to pay a loan from a bank and I ask for an audit before finding the agreed sum to pay.
But apart from that, how do you get your ways and means down? We have to get revenues up and expenditures reduced as much as possible.
Ways and Means is the money that the Central Bank of Nigeria lends to the Federal Government in the meantime to augment spending based on the time the revenue is generated.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, has said that the apex bank will no longer give Ways and Means to the President until the previous loans are repaid.
Olayemi noted that it was one of the measures taken by the apex bank to curtail the economic downturn currently plaguing the country.
