By Ezrel Tabiowo
Abuja
Minister of Finance and Coordinator of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has disclosed that for Nigeria to sustain economic stability, the excess crude account which had been depleted to the tune of $4.1billion now, “will have to be jerked up to nothing less than $5billion.”
Okonjo-Iweala disclosed this yesterday in Abuja while appearing before the Senate committees on Finance and National Planning during Consideration of the 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as a working document for the 2015 Budget.
Responding to concerns raised by the committee as to whether the 2015 budget was a workable document to go by or not, especially against the backdrop of proposed parameters in the MTEF document, the minister said whatever oil price benchmark will be approved by the National Assembly, the most important thing is for the country to arrive at a price that will give leverage for enormous savings against times like this.
Iweala said: “My belief is no matter what is settled on at this point in time, what is pleasing and that brings us all together is the realisation that what we were trying to say a few years ago has happened and it is happening in front of us and all of us need to come together to find a solution.
“Whatever the decision will be, even if we agree on another benchmark, we still need measures to be in place because we have no idea on whether the oil price will continue to drop or go up.
“Now, you need a certain amount there to cushion at any one time. Before you spend the rest you need a certain amount and I think what happened even after the need for augmentation the amount continued to be shared that was where the mistake was made and habit set in so that when we came and even for the few months we met the full amount there was still insistence on augmenting and sharing.”