The Federal Executive Council, FEC, has approved a projection of oil benchmark of 75 dollars for 2025 and the pegging of oil production at 2.6 million barrels per day.
Briefing State House correspondents on the approvals, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Alhaji Abubakar Bagudu, said exchange rate for next year had also been fixed at 1,400 Naira to one dollar, with 4.6 percent expected GDP growth.
He said the budget estimate included the borrowing of 13.8 trillion Naira, all of which are contained in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF.
“The Council approved the medium term, expenditure framework and is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly. This in addition to bills that are already at the National Assembly , the economic stabilisation bill and tax reform bills, which we believe we will have a very very, strong growth in 2025”, he stated.
Also briefing, the Minister of Finance, Mr. Wale Edun, said approval had been given to the Ministry to submit a borrowing plan to the National Assembly for consideration.
Mr. Edun said if considered, Nigeria could access 2.2 billion dollars financing programme for external borrowing.
Equally approved was the Ministry’s Real Estate Investment Fund, which aims to address Nigeria’s 22 million housing unit deficit with a 250 billion Naira initial fund.
“This fund will offer low-cost, long-term mortgages, blending government funds with market-based rates to achieve rates around 10% with tenures over 20 years”
“This initiative is expected to stimulate economic growth and job creation. Perhaps a Euro bond of about $1.7 billion and Sukuk financing of another $500 million the actual makeup of the financing which will be done as soon as the National Assembly has considered and seen fate to hopefully approve of the borrowing plan and the external borrowing approval is given, it will be done this year, as soon as possible after approval”, Mr. Edun further explained.
He however explained that the actual combination of instruments to be raised would depend on what transaction and commercial advisers would say about market conditions when Nigeria would enter the market.
