PRESIDENT BUHARI SET TO BOOST THE ECONOMY

President Muhammadu Buhari presented plans to lawmakers to boost the nation’s spending by 20 percent next year in a bid to revive an economy set for its first full-year contraction in more than two decades.
Buhari asked lawmakers to allow the government to spend 7.3 trillion naira ($23 billion) in 2017, compared with this year’s budget of 6.1 trillion naira. The proposal is based on a projected price of $42.50 per barrel of oil, the economy’s biggest revenue earner, and targets a deficit of 2.36 trillion naira or 2.18 percent of gross domestic product.
The 2017 budget will be of “recovery and growth,” Buhari told lawmakers Wednesday in the capital, Abuja. It’s intended to “pull the economy out of recession as quickly as possible.”
Lawmakers will have to approve the proposals before they can be implemented.
Lower prices of crude, coupled with declining output after militants blew up pipelines in the Niger River delta contributed to the oil industry contracting by 22 percent in the third quarter, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. That and the delayed implementation of the 2016 budget and shortages of power and foreign currency contributed to the economy contracting in the first nine months of 2016. GDP will probably shrink by 1.7 percent for the year, according to the International Monetary Fund.