As the federal government fine-tunes preparations for the 2017 budget, Wednesday, it approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) for 2017-2019, estimating that the nation’s economy will grow at an average of 3.73 per cent in the next three years.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, who disclosed this in Abuja, after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, said the economy is projected to grow by three per cent in 2017, 4.26 per cent in 2018 and 4.04 per cent in 2019.
“The reason the GDP growth rate for 2019 is slightly lower than 2018 is because it’s an election year and usually in an election year, because of the uncertainties, we have also made provisions for that,” he clarified.
The minister said government set $42.50 as a reference price in 2017 for oil and projected that it would rise to $45 in 2018 and $50 in 2019.
He said: “Government is being very conservative in terms of the reference price of crude oil, even though we are expecting it to go higher than this, but we are keeping to an extremely conservative price scenario.”
In terms of oil production, he said government would retain this year’s estimate of 2.2 million barrels per day for 2017 despite the fact that the militancy in the Niger Delta has forced oil production to below one million barrels per day.
For 2018, government remained ambitious and expects production to rise to 2.3 million barrels per day, while in 2019 it is targeting an increase to 2.4 million barrels per day.
The minister said: “The Federal Executive Council meeting approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) for 2017-2019.
“As you know, the Fiscal Responsibility Act requires the executive to prepare the MTEF/FSP and send it on to the National Assembly for their consideration.
“And it is on the basis of the MTEF that the next budget will be fashioned. So, in short, we have started the process of preparing the 2017 budget.
“Before the MTEF was presented to FEC for consideration, there were extensive consultations with the private sectors, governors and NGOs.
“In the 2017-2019 MTEF, the government intends to intensify efforts in pursuing a manpower driven economy.
“So we intend to intensify efforts to diversify the economy; we intend to go on with the implementation of on-going reforms in public finance; we intend to enhance the environment for ease of doing business so as to generate private sector investments.
“We intend to continue to pursue gender sensitive, pro-poor and inclusive social intervention schemes, similar to what we did in 2016 – our social intervention programmes is going to be sustained.
“We intend to devote even more resources to critical infrastructure projects, just as we did this year. So we will continue to spend more on roads, rails, transport infrastructure, ports and so on.
“We intend to focus on governance and security and we intend to maintain the zero-based budgetary approach.”
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