Business
Nigeria: Buhari unveils $30.8 billion budget – infrastructure spending expected to jumpstart economy
Previous Nigerian budgets have tended to allocated more funds for recurrent expenditure, such as workers and officials salaries, rather than for capital outlay. In the 2016 budget, capital expenditure exceeds recurrent expenditure in a bid to press ahead with urgently needed improvements to infrastructure.
The budget foresees a deficit of 2.16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) which would be financed by a combination of domestic and foreign borrowing.
“They are borrowing much more than in the past and are going to carry a bigger debt burden,” Ayo Teriba, chief executive officer of Economic Associates, an advisors firm based in Lagos, told reporters.
The budget aims for a growth rate of 4.37 percent in 2016.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that Nigeria’s growth would slow to 4 percent this year, down from 6.3 percent last year.
Buhari also renewed his anti-corruption pledge to recover stolen funds no matter how long it took, or where they were hidden.
