The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, has disclosed that the administration of President Bola Tinubu has exited Ways and Means (borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria) within a record time of one year, after repaying N7.3 trillion out of the total debt owed the apex bank.

Mr. Edun made this known thursday in Abuja during the half year Ministerial press briefing with the theme, “Economic Recovery and Growth: Progress and Prospect 2024.

“We are not only talking of the international debt service. We are talking of the domestic debt service as well. In fact, I can say, this government has exited within a year of President Bola Tinubu’s coming into office. This government has exited Ways and Means borrowing.”

The minister said the debt of the country is down by $10 billion as the government has made resolute commitment to service all its loan and obligations as and when due.

“Debt is down in dollar terms. $108 billion to $91 billion. The Government has diligently serviced all its loans and obligations without recourse to Ways and Means financing. The government has met all its obligations. We did not rely on Ways and Means”, he said.

He also said it has adopted Direct Transfers to the beneficiaries of Social Investment Programme to create transparency and accountability while revealing that the Cash Transfers had resumed with about 600, 000 beneficiaries having been recently covered.

“I’d like to continue by emphasizing that in terms of the strategic initiatives, in terms of the counter measures to cope with high cost of living, which as we had said earlier, is one of the early costs. The spike in inflation is a natural and expected reaction to changes that needed to be made. And that was decades ago, not to talk of the fact that they needed to meet now.

“So the direct transfers are geared towards providing 15 million households, that’s 75 million people with direct monetary support, because that allows them to decide what they want to buy with it, whether it is food, whether it is medicine, they decide and the world all over, this has been proved to be an effective way of intervening to help people with their cost of living. We started and had to reconfigure in the interest of transparency and accountability, the direct payments program had to be reconfigured. And now we have a gold standard in providing direct payments to individuals and therefore to their households.

On whether or not, the Federal Government is paying fuel subsidy, Mr Edin said that it is technically paying subsidy, even though it was not mentioned anywhere in the 2024 budget.

This is even as the landing cost of fuel has risen to N1175 with marketers projecting that subsidy will peak at N700 billion per month

While answering a question on the recent Supreme Court landmark judgement on Local Government autonomy, Wale Edin said “What has come to pass now is a new fiscal regime where through the state/LGA local joint accounts, funding can go directly to the LGAs. A committee is looking at the practicality of what the supreme Court has said. FAAC could not yet implement the supreme Court judgement due to non availability of the Certified True Copies of the judgement and as soon as that is done, it will be affected”.

Edun emphasized the President’s commitment to the welfare of ordinary Nigerians. He said as part of efforts to further improve foreign exchange liquidity and to showcase the resilience of the Nigerian financial system as economic stability takes root, the Minister also announced plans for the Federal Government to issue domestic USD denominated securities of up to US$500 million, in the first instance to attract investment from Diaspora Nigerians and Nigerians with savings held abroad.