The Federal Government of Nigeria has released the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF till 2019. Among other things, the framework already approved by the executive arm says oil will be given a conservative role.
According the MTEF, crude oil price benchmark will be peggedUSD45 and USD50 per barrel in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The implication of this is that the federal government will be looking at generating more revenue from non-oil taxes.
The execitive plan also projected that in 2017 oil barrels per day will be 2,7 million, 2,3 million in 2018 and 2,4 million in 2019.
Just like the oil price projection the MTEF is projecting a growth rate of 3%, 4.26% and 4.04% in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively. Growth figures such as these means that Nigeria will be out of recession before or in 2017 but the plan did not state when in 2017.
The National Assembly will be required to deliberate on the plan before it becomes sacrosanct.
However, the challenge with these projections is that it only considered oil revenue, at least on the surface.
If Nigeria would have de-emphasised oil, there is the need for the MTEF to be projected in a manner that reflects the direction the country is going.
