COVID- 19: Oil revenues fall by N125bn – FG
President Muhammadu Buhari
Federal Government has said that oil revenue target earlier put at N940.91 billion has crashed to N125 billion in the first quarter of 2020.
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, attributed it to the raving impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
According to her, the fall represented 31 per cent of the projected oil revenue target.
She also said the government would suspend debt reductions from states’ allocations to support their economies.
Ahmed, said with Nigeria’s poverty rate put at 40 percent, this drastic fall in oil revenue would only exacerbate Nigeria’s state of squalor, pointing out that economic situation will be worsened with the gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected to contract by 8.94 per cent this year.
She, however, said if the measures being put in place to ameliorate the state of the economy works as planned, the contraction might only be by 4.4 per cent without fiscal stimulus.
Ahmed also explained that with effective fiscal stimulus in place during this pandemic, the situation might bring the contraction down to as low as 0.5 per cent.
