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The Lagos Chamber Of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has urged the government to include the private sector and stakeholders in the economy in the details of the finance bill referenced by the president in the budget presentation to the National Assembly.
In a statement signed by Muda Yusuf, director general of LCCI, he said “It is important to ensure appropriate engagement with stakeholders before the passage of the bill into law. We believe that there should be a window of opportunity for stakeholders in the economy to make their inputs into the budget consideration process.”
speaking on the preparation and presentation of the budget, he commended the move to return to the January to December cycle for the preparation and presentation of federal government budgets as it would encourage good long term plans towards achieving economic growth and development by the key players in the economy and will also reduce late presentation and approval of the budget which has characterized the budgets in previous years.
Yusuf said that while the agenda set for the budget is realistic, using an exchange rate of N305 to a dollar is not sustainable especially when considering the decline in revenue which has become a source of concern for the government and the citizens.
Consequentially, he said this call for the need to innovate means of improving revenue generation, reducing leakages and ensuring that revenue generating agencies of government remit what is due to government. He advised that to achieve a better result from the proposed budget, a better approach must be employed to generate revenue.
“the total budget size is N10.3trillion. The recurrent component is N4.88 trillion, debt service is N2.45 trillion. Together, these two budget items amount to 7.33 trillion, which is 90% total revenue estimates. And from the track record of revenue performance, the percentage may be much higher when related to the actual numbers. All of these indicate that the hope for an impactful investment in infrastructure is dim and would remain so for some time to come.”
“This underlines the imperative of appropriate policy choices to attract domestic and foreign private sector capital for infrastructure financing. The government needs to look beyond tax credit in its quest for more complimentary funding sources for infrastructure. We should be looking more in the direction of equity financing. But for this to happen the policy and regulatory environment must be right.”
He advised that in generating revenue as well as reducing the financing gaps that currently exists, policies and activities should be put in place to attract private capital for investment in key infrastructures that may considered bankable.
Gbemi Faminu
