By Dayo Omoogun
The Minister of Finance Zainab Ahmed, has said that the Federal Government will be engaging with the private sector to find the best ways and means of providing them with urgently needed support.
She was responding to journalists who had taken her to task on the seeming neglect of the plight of players in the private sector such as the media industry who are also reeling under the emergent realities occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The committee chaired by His Excellency the Vice-President is going to be engaging specific sectors. So for example, we’re going to be meeting with the Pharmaceutical industry to find out exactly what their requirement is, because we realize that requirements on a sector by sector basis may be unique. So we would be meeting with the Aviation industry as well as large food producers to design programs within this Fund that meets their own requirement” she explained.
“We don’t want to sit and assume that we know what they need and just design it ourselves”, she stressed.
On whether grants could be made available to private sector players, she said this is not possible because of the challenging fiscal environment.
The Minister said “We are organizing support for the private sector. The Central Bank has announced Infrastructure Fund, Fund for SMEs, so that private sectors can access these funds. The AFREXIM bank has announced a $3b that is also available for the private sector, the IFC which is a branch of the World Bank also has funds which is for the private sector. The federal government of Nigeria is not in the position, because of our fiscal space, to give grants to the private sector. What we are able to do is to make sure they have access to low-cost financing and also to direct the Commercial banks and the Central bank to, as much as possible, renegotiate and defer their debt service obligations to provide more fiscal space to these businesses”