Population growth with the declining economic growth is a terrible combination to have- Ben Bruce
Fri Jun 10, 2016 03:54:pm National
2.1K By Buchi Obichie
Speaking at the senate's 1year anniversary session on Thursday, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, PDP, Bayelsa East, highlighted the economic challenges the nation was facing at the moment. The Senator noted that high birth-rate in a crumbling economy is a terrible combination; and also gave budgetary advice to President Buhari. According to Senator Bruce, budgets must be structured in a manner that paid at least fifty percent attention to capital projects.
He said: "We celebrate one year in office but I am very troubled by our economy. A lot of things have gone wrong and we have no time to fix the problems. Everybody complains that the price of oil has caused the decline of economy.
"But everybody must understand that the oil sector contributes fifty per cent to the GDP. The GDP cannot all of a sudden have a negative growth of minus .36 per cent. And if we have this again this quarter, we go into a recession."
"We have a very serious problem, coupled with the fact that 18,000 babies are born in Nigeria everyday, more than the whole of Western Europe combined and population growth with the declining economic growth is a terrible combination to have.
"This is coupled with the fact that after one year, the budget has not been implemented as Kemi, the Minister of Finance has said.
"It is very unlikely the budget would be implemented fully this year because we have only six months to go.
"Now, let me make a request to President Buhari. When the budget for next year is presented, he must give Kemi a direct instruction that recurrent expenditure should not exceed 50 per cent of the budget.
"It is ridiculous for us to talk about capital expenditure of N1.5 trillion in a N6 trillion budget when, in fact, we should be talking about the N6 trillion budget, the capital expenditure budget should be the only budget. Recurrent expenditure is a fixed amount; regardless of what happened, you have to pay salaries.
"As a country of 170 million people, the civil servants in Nigeria are only 2.2 million. If 2.2 million people consume 75 per cent of our entire budget, then we have a serious problem. What is going to happen is that Nigeria can never develop.
"That is the fact of life. If we want Nigeria to develop, recurrent expenditure can and should never exceed 50 per cent as a starting point regardless of the consequences. No budget to be presented to the National Assembly must exceed 50 per cent for recurrent.
"We want money for capital expenditure, we want money for healthcare, we want money for education, we want money to solve our problems.
"We cannot survive as a nation if all we do is pay salaries for 56 years. It is a very serious problem and here is a subject nobody talks about, population explosion 18,000 babies born every single day and these are excluding babies born from rape victims. This is a serious problem."
He said: "We celebrate one year in office but I am very troubled by our economy. A lot of things have gone wrong and we have no time to fix the problems. Everybody complains that the price of oil has caused the decline of economy.
"But everybody must understand that the oil sector contributes fifty per cent to the GDP. The GDP cannot all of a sudden have a negative growth of minus .36 per cent. And if we have this again this quarter, we go into a recession."
"We have a very serious problem, coupled with the fact that 18,000 babies are born in Nigeria everyday, more than the whole of Western Europe combined and population growth with the declining economic growth is a terrible combination to have.
"This is coupled with the fact that after one year, the budget has not been implemented as Kemi, the Minister of Finance has said.
"It is very unlikely the budget would be implemented fully this year because we have only six months to go.
"Now, let me make a request to President Buhari. When the budget for next year is presented, he must give Kemi a direct instruction that recurrent expenditure should not exceed 50 per cent of the budget.
"It is ridiculous for us to talk about capital expenditure of N1.5 trillion in a N6 trillion budget when, in fact, we should be talking about the N6 trillion budget, the capital expenditure budget should be the only budget. Recurrent expenditure is a fixed amount; regardless of what happened, you have to pay salaries.
"As a country of 170 million people, the civil servants in Nigeria are only 2.2 million. If 2.2 million people consume 75 per cent of our entire budget, then we have a serious problem. What is going to happen is that Nigeria can never develop.
"That is the fact of life. If we want Nigeria to develop, recurrent expenditure can and should never exceed 50 per cent as a starting point regardless of the consequences. No budget to be presented to the National Assembly must exceed 50 per cent for recurrent.
"We want money for capital expenditure, we want money for healthcare, we want money for education, we want money to solve our problems.
"We cannot survive as a nation if all we do is pay salaries for 56 years. It is a very serious problem and here is a subject nobody talks about, population explosion 18,000 babies born every single day and these are excluding babies born from rape victims. This is a serious problem."
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