Africa > West Africa > Nigeria > Buhari hold talks with Lagarde, IMF team

Nigeria: Buhari hold talks with Lagarde, IMF team

2016/01/05

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will holds talks with a team the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday.

The Fund said on Monday its managing director Christine Lagarde would meet Buhari and his Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun in Abuja.

“I look forward to productive meetings … as they address significant economic challenges, most importantly the impact of low oil prices,” said Lagarde in a statement.

The statement gave no other details, but the conference suggests an acknowledgement of Buhari’s efforts to revive Nigeria’s economy.

Buhari was elected in March next a campaign in which he promised to clamp down on the endemic corruption that has left a lot of Nigerians mired in poverty despite the country’s enormous energy wealth.

He again announced a record budget for 2016, forecasting a doubling of the deficit to 2.2 trillion naira ($11 billion) and a tripling of capital spending intended to help the country adjust to the downturn in oil, which has lost around two-thirds of its price since mid-2014.

It has foreign currency reserves worth around $30 billion, and plans to borrow as much as 900 billion naira abroad to fund the deficit, which is equivalent to 2.16 % of gross domestic product, Buhari said. Some 984 billion naira would be borrowed at home.

Nigeria relies on crude exports for additional than half of national revenues and is Africa’s top oil producer.

Lagarde is due to arrive in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Monday. She is due to give a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday and will as well meet business leaders during her visit, the IMF said.

Lagarde will as well visit Cameroon, where she will meet President Paul Biya and his economic team.

The government of the central African country that exports coffee, cocoa and oil tabled a 2016 budget of 4,200 billion CFA francs ($6.9 billion) in December.

Cameroon is part of an 8,700-strong task force inclunding troops from Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin that has pledged to destroy Boko Haram, which though based mainly in Nigeria has become a major threat to regional security.

Lagarde will as well meet Finance Ministers from the six member nations of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), delivering a speech to the group on Jan. 8.

“The country (Cameroun) and all CEMAC region are confronted with the twin shocks of the oil-price slump and a surge in disruptions related to security,” Lagarde said

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