Economy: Buhari has failed on all scores — Atiku

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2019 elections in Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has scored President Muhammadu Buhari low on all scores as it concerns the economy.
Abubakar passed the verdict in Washington DC, United States of America on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Annual Meetings.
Speaking through his spokesman, Segun Sowunmi, the former Vice President said the resort of the Buhari Administration to taxes without first providing the enabling environment for those to be taxed to thrive, showed that the government lacks clear understanding of what the issues are.
He said: “There is no gaining saying that the approach of the Buhari-led government has been running on the single perception indicators for everything. 
“It seems that they desire to interpret what they think should happen to the country is predicated primarily on taxes and perhaps on borrowing. 
“But the thinking of the World Bank/IMF from this annual meeting in Washington DC suggest that there is need for caution because of the volatility of the debt market and the vulnerability in the market may cause a lot of problem for emerging markets who are heavily in this. 
“More importantly to ask is what are they doing with that debt?”
When asked his view on what should be done with the debt, Abubakar said: “They have had about five opportunities of running the national budget; they have run the budget from 2016 to 2019, and they have proposed another for 2020. 
“So, after about five budget cycles, you will need to know that you are not going to grow your economy significantly if in every budget cycle all you are trying to do is to find another way to increase the taxes, find another way to increase borrowing and then you are not seeing that there is a commensurate growth at the speed at which you need to see it if you are borrowing. 
“It’s a chicken and hen approach and we hold the view that if you just prepare the economy of your country to be more receptive to private capitals from all over the world, you may be able to use more creative instrument of long term infrastructure funding with private capital to take care of some of those things that you are doing. 
“We are also of the view that government in Africa especially in Nigeria needn’t consider most of the things that other countries of the world have now started seeing as businesses as social investment. 
“For instance, you cannot run a concept that imagine that the Federal Government is still going to be in the business of low cost housing, that is kind of an archaic approach. 
“What the Federal Government needs to be doing and what we would have been doing if we were in charge of the country right now, would have been to make sure that we can prepare the real estate market to be able to do those houses and if need be government can then be an uptaker of those properties for purposes of placing those that are vulnerable in society in housing. 
“That is what we see the whole world doing but they are not route. 
“We also believe that in terms of taxes, yes you need to expand the tax net by bringing in those who are taxable in, but you cannot constantly insist that the only way you can grow is to add more taxes. 
“You are moving VAT from 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent, that means that you have a view around creating wealth that indicates that the only way is to take what is available. 
“What we believe is that you must take a glance at what your fellow African countries are doing. 
“We have a very good example in Ghana. 
“What they have been doing to attract investment in their country and open up the economy a little bit more is actually to lower taxes. 
“This is because they a hold view that if they create the investments first then they can tax people. 
“The Nigerian government seems to be running a budget that is consuming and willing to consume and also a budget for today. 
“If they are futuristic, they would have known that before you increase tax, you better as well work on reducing the consumption of overhead that you are managing. 
“If there was a commensurate reduction in the overhead cost of government and the cost of doing governance, then you can say we have done our beat from this side and therefore we could do a little bit more in taxes.”
The full interview will be published on this news website shortly.