Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has stated that fiscal policy will be the main driver of his government if he is elected into office in the February 25, 2023 General Elections.
Speaking during an engagement with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) recently, the former Lagos State governor said that in the first 100 days in office, he would assemble a team of technocrats to run the government with him, adding that subsidy will be removed 100% on PMS and redirected into more worthy ventures such as housing, rails, roads, and infrastructural renewal..
“Fiscal policy will be the main driver of our reforms as monetary policy is a weaker and less effective instrument. Henceforth, we will not tie our budget to dollar denominated oil revenues
“We will tie our budget to the projected spending levels that will push the annual growth rate above 10%, and this will inadvertently reduce the unemployment rate and the economy will be doubled in seven years.
“On electricity, generation and transmission will be decentralised 100%, allowing for investors to explore all sources of energy and more lucrative tariff system for better ROI for investors,” he said.
The presidential candidate promised that his government will relax the restrictions on import and foreign exchange, which he said has increased smuggling and round tripping that has stifled the economy thus far.
In continuation of this, he stated that his government will move to a unified exchange rate regime, thereby cutting the official and black market dichotomy.
“On unemployment for our teeming youths, we intend to focus more on the creative sector music, fashion and movies because this sector has the tendencies of reducing unemployment by 30 to 40%.
“To achieve this, the legal environment will be created to address piracy and copyright issues and give backing to the much needed private sector funding to boost the sector, whilst the government will be providing the hard infrastructure needs to generate millions of jobs and foreign exchange for the country,” he said.
Tinubu explained that despite passing the Petroleum Industry Act in 2021, the nation has experienced “dwindling revenues from oil owing to oil theft and vandalisation. Reforms will be made to ensure 100% implementation of PIA by removing bottlenecks and working in a more coordinated manner using Technology to drive the reforms.”
According to him, “closing fiscal gaps, promoting domestic revenue mobilisation, implementing tax reforms, curbing institutionised corruption, optimising budget, and streamlining bureaucracy will be imperative for a new Nigeria.”
