The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday advised the Nigerian government to commit more funds to infrastructure projects as a strategic option of growing the nation’s economy on a sustainable basis.
The IMF Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, Mr Paolo Mauro, gave the advice during the launching of the October 2018 Fiscal Monitor Report at the on-going IMF/World Bank Group (WBG) Annual Meetings in Bali, Indonesia.
The report focused broadly on the global public sector assets and liabilities 10 years after the global financial crisis.
While not ruling out the need to increase its revenue generation base, Mauro explained that it was important that Nigeria spent much of its tax revenue on building a strong infrastructure base for economic activities to thrive.
He said: “Generally, I think it is not only about shoring up the revenue, but also being careful about the spending by improving the choices that one makes on which infrastructure project to carry out.
“How does one go about selecting the ones that are really going to boost growth? So I think it is a priority to increase revenues but also to be careful about the ways we can make spending more efficient”, the fiscal expert added
In addition, he pointed out that the ratio of interest payments to revenue for Nigeria remained high, adding that increase in revenue base would facilitate social spending, infrastructure building and carrying out other types of spending for economic growth.
Mauro confirmed that the IMF had been engaging the Nigerian government in discussions n over the years on how to achieve economic growth as a development priority.
He expatiated: “We see the priorities in tax administration but there are also aspects of tax policy that could help.
“In tax administration, to increase the compliance rate, something that could be done is to increase tax audit to use e-filing to a greater extent, there are also data matching exercises that could be conducted”, the IMF director advised.
