Buhari confirms plans to sell govt properties to finance 2021 budget

Apart from its plan to engage in domestic and foreign borrowings to fund the 2021 budget, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government has confirmed that it will also sell some government-owned properties for the same purpose.

The federal government also said it will sell some non-oil assets to serve as additional source of finance for the year’s budget.

This is contained in a Tuesday presentation made in Abuja by the finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, to stakeholders about the signed 2021 budget.

The presentation, titled, ‘Public Presentation of 2021 FGN Approved Budget – Breakdown and Highlights’ was dated January 12.

President Muhammadu Buhari had on December 31, 2020, signed the N13.58 trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal year – about N505 billion higher than the budget proposed in October, 2020.

In the approved budget, about N496.5 billion was approved for statutory transfers and N3.3 trillion was approved for debt services.

The recurrent expenditure was put at N5.6 trillion with capital expenditure at N4.1 trillion and fiscal deficit at N5.2 trillion (5,196,007,992,292).

Already, many have condemned the federal government’s consistent resolve to borrow to fund budgets annually. For this year, the government is to borrow N5.6 trillion from domestic and foreign resources. The amount being the total deficit for the 2021 budget.

This represents 3.93 per cent of the GDP.

This paper had reported how the deficit will be financed, according to the ministry of finance.

Both the president and Ms Zainab had said Nigeria will borrow money from the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and countries like Brazil to fund the budget.