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Renowned economist, Bismarck Rewane, has said that Nigerians are not interested in the budgetary if the prices of basic commodities like rice, bread, and garri don’t go down.
Rewane, the Managing Director
of Financial Derivatives Company Limited, made this known on Thursday, November
30.
At his maiden budget
presentation before the National Assembly on Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu
said the proposed N27.5trn 2024 budget will ensure micro-economic stability,
poverty reduction, and greater access to social security, amongst others.
He highlighted priority areas
such as security, local job creation, macro-economic stability, investment
environment optimization, human capital development, poverty reduction, and
social security.
Breaking down the budget
estimates, the President fixed recurrent non-debit expenditure at N9.92trn,
capital expenditure at N8.73trn, debt service at N8.25trn, revenue at
N18.32trn, new borrowings at N7.83trn and deficit at N9.18trn.
Responding to the development,
Rewane said, “In the end, budgetary arithmetics, budgetary mathematics in
economics is of no use to anybody except when by this time, six months’ time,
if we are buying rice at N40,000 a bag rather than N60,000 a bag, if we are
buying bread N900 a big loaf instead of N1,300 which we are doing today. If we
are buying garri at lower prices.
“The people are not interested
in whether the budget is balanced and what the debt is. How does it (the
budget) affect their day-to-day livelihood? That is the key thing.”
“And as you know, prices are up
and people are under tremendous pressure,” he said, adding that the rate of
poverty in the country is driving people mad.
“You will notice that on the
streets of Lagos in particular, the number of lunatics has increased and part
of it is driven by poverty. Many mental health issues. People are pushed to the
wall. Some of them walk across the road even in moving traffic.
“People need to feel the
impact. the impact is not going to be felt because of 10 or 12% of GDP, that is
N27trn; it has to be more. Where is the more going to come from? It’s going to
come from investors and investors are going to come here when they are sure
that their money is safe and the environment is clean, and they can look
forward to a brighter future.
He said the government must be honest with Nigerians on the economic realities, saying that “honesty is in short supply”.
According to him, people cannot
start pretending to be happy. “You can fake news but you can’t fake
prosperity,” he said.
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