Nigeria’s Presidency on Tuesday flawed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on what it described as its excessive and often exaggerated assessments of the country’s economic reforms, inflation rate, and poverty level.
The Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Economic Affairs, Tope Fasua, gave the warning to the Bretton Woods institution when he featured on Channels Television’s Morning Brief programme
His remarks were based on IMF article titled “How Nigeria Can Unleash Its Economic Potential, published on Monday in which it expressed concerns about the country’s persistently high inflation and the slow pace of reform impacts.
The development finance institution highlighted President Tinubu administration’s reforms but raised concerns over Nigeria’s inflation rate, high poverty and infrastructure challenges.
- Advertisement -
It called for a more effective budgetary framework and the need to channel savings from fuel subsidy removal into critical investments while also advising that once Nigeria’s cash transfer system is fully functional, tax rates could be aligned with regional benchmarks.
It recommended: “The country needs stronger and more sustained growth to lift millions out of poverty and food insecurity.”
Responding to the Fund’s position on the current economic reforms of the government, Fasua said: “Whoever wrote that statement is not sounding like an economist because an economist is not a fantasist, that’s a fantastic statement they just made, expecting things to just turn around.
“Sometimes these statements feel overrated. We should invest in collecting our own data and stop depending solely on Bretton Woods institutions. Let’s build our own capacity and data credibility.
“Sometimes, one wants to think they go into overdrive as almost every week or every two to three days, there’s a statement on Nigeria. At the end of the day, it leaves everyone in a state of confusion.
“This administration under President Tinubu has done some of the deepest reforms that we have seen in a while. We only just got the tax bills signed into law—bills that offer relief to low-income earners and double the tax threshold for small businesses.
“We haven’t even allowed those measures to settle, yet we’re hearing all sorts of very fatalistic statements from different places, including, unfortunately, the IMF”, Fasua stressed.
He flawed the IMF as becoming overly critical, describing its frequent statements on Nigeria as “heckling” and potentially destabilizing.
Fasua recalled that the Nigerian government recently repaid $3 billion to the IMF to exit its COVID-19 loan package even when many other countries are yet to offset their debts to the Fund.
He maintained: “We’re not asking for a pat on the back; we’re just saying, you know what, give us a breather. Let us be able to implement the policies we’ve started. They acknowledge that the reforms are good, yet they keep demanding more, and it’s almost like being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
According to him, the IMF’s statements has the potential of pitching the Nigerian people against the government, noting that the statements lack nuance and fail to consider the depth of the economic problems inherited.
Fasua charged the IMF to “give us a break; let us be able to know where we are going before coming at us at every angle and generally throwing us off whack. It’s like a house that is completely dilapidated. We’re being asked to provide full comfort in two years after removing the roof and working on the foundation. That’s not realistic”.
Commenting further on the Fund’s advisory messages and its lending regime, the President’s aide clarified: “The IMF has both an advisory and a lending arm and sometimes it looks like their advice clashes with their lending stance. We don’t even know which to believe anymore.
“We’ve done the right things. They say they want more—but the government also has a right to say, ‘Let us see how what we’ve done turns out.’ Like the president would say, ‘Let the poor breathe”, Fasua stressed.
