Nigeria’s finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, on Friday, defended President Buhari’s government plan to sale public assets to finance the 2021 budget, stating that the move will benefit Nigerians and help boost the economy.
Ahmed who stated this while appearing on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, explained that some government assets are currently moribund and provide little or no value to Nigerians in their current state.
She said, “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.”
“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 who late last revealed government’s plan to sell public assets to partly finance the N13.58 trillion 2021 budget, stressed that the “intention is not just funding the budget, it is to reactivate these assets and hand it over and have them bring contributions to the growth in the economy.”
She added that the Bureau of Public Enterprises will begin to coordinate with other arms of government on the asset sales in the first quarter of the year.
” . . . 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 that Bureau of Public Enterprises,” she told the Television station.
“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.”
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