Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, said on Friday that the Federal Government’s planned sale of public assets would benefit Nigerians and help to boost the economy.
She spoke on Sunrise Daily, a morning programme on Channels TV where she laid rationalised the plan and addressed concerns raised by some members of civil society organisation.
She said some government assets were currently moribund and therefore provided little or no value to Nigerians in their current states.
“There are some government assets that are dead that can be sold to the private sector to be reactivated and put to use for the benefit of Nigerians,” the Minister said.
According to her: “So we are looking at different – and I am a member of the National Council on Privatisation – we are looking at different categories of government assets that government has not been able to manage, that are lying down and in some cases even completely rundown, to cede them off to the private sector.”
The minister had during her public presentation of the breakdown and key highlights of the 2021 Appropriation Act on January 12, disclosed that the government planned to sell public assets to partly finance the N13.58 trillion 2021 budget.
She reiterated the plan during the Channels TV interview, stressing “(Federal Government’s) intention is not just funding the budget, it is to reactivate these assets and hand them over and have them bring contributions to the growth in the economy.”
She said that the Bureau of Public Enterprises would begin to coordinate with the other arms of government on the asset sales in the first quarter of the year.
According to her” . . . in the last week of December, we had a meeting of the National Council on Privatisation where we approved the annual work plan, the 2021 work plan, for the Bureau of Public Enterprises.
“And I guess it is in this first quarter that the BPE will now be engaging the Senate committee and other committees they work with to say this is our work plan for the year.”
A civil society group, SERAP, had asked the National Assembly to stop the federal government from selling public assets to fund the 2021 budget.
The group had argued that instead, government should look to identify areas in the budget to cut, such as salaries and allowances for public officials.
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