By Olasunkanmi Akoni & monsur Olowoopejo
Lagos State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Ben Akabueze, has said that the state will continue to run a deficit budget till year 2013.
He, however, added that after the estimated year, there might be an improvement in its budgets.
The Commissioner, who gave the indication, yesterday, while presenting his ministry’s achievements to journalists at Ikeja, said that the state might be high in debt for a while.
He, however, stressed that the state has no need to borrow at the moment but only to finance capital project.
He cautioned against giving wrong impression about volume of the state’s debt, but the capacity to accommodate such a profile.
“America is about the most indebted nation in the world, but the size of its economy is such that can be compare to very few countries. Borrowing in itself is not wrong, it is what you do with the borrowed-money that mattered,” Akabueze said.
Noting that Nigeria, as one of the N-11 (Next 11 after the OECD) countries, owes just about $9 billion out of the over $11 trillion debt profile of the N-11, as against that of South Korea’s $314 billion, “but the reality is that the Korea’s economy is bigger.”
He assured on the state’s capacity, through its budgetary provisions, to sustain the servicing of its debt profile.
“Lagos State is the only state in Nigeria that the World Bank granted budget support facility because of its transparency in its public finance,” he said.
Akabuexe also disclosed that the project contract sums submitted by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) running to 1,455 for 2010 was scaled down to N286.5 billion from N343 Billion.
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Lagos to run on deficit budgeting till 2013