Finance Minister envisages a tough year 2016 for Nigeria.

Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun

Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, at the opening of the 7th Annual Bankers Committee retreat in Lagos, predicted that year 2016 would be a tough year for Nigeria.

She also noted that Nigeria is facing some significant micro-economic challenges that required some fiscal house-keeping.

In her words, “It is going to be tough and we are going to have to make extremely tough decision. We have got the resilience and space to do that.”

Adeosun however predicted that there was still hope for Nigeria as the debt to GDP ratio is at 12 percent and that gives space to run a deficit budget which in turn will enable the stimulating of the economy.

In her words, “To do so, we need to do some fiscal housekeeping. We have to control the significant challenge we have around recurrent. If you look at recurrent at a percentage of our total budget with the just approved supplementary budget, it is about 90 percent. If we continue in that trajectory, every penny we borrow will go into recurrent,” she said.