During the joint press briefing at the end of the 2018 International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring Meeting in Washington DC, United States, the Minister of Finance; Mrs. Kemi Adeosun disclosed that the $322,515,931.83 Abacha loot recovered from the Swiss government, which is already domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will be channeled towards the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCTP) of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP).
The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, also disclosed at the briefing that, the nation’s external reserves now stands at $47.93 billion.
The Conditional Cash Transfer(CCTP) is about paying N5,000 monthly to the poor and vulnerable persons in Nigeria. The money is paid bi-monthly at N10,000 for each beneficiary.
“The objective of the National Social Safety Nets Project for Nigeria is to provide access to targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households under an expanded national social safety net system,” Adeosun said.
Adeosun also affirmed that the country’s positive growth outlook would be sustained while noting that the present growth outlook contrasted with the outlook in 2015, adding that inflation rate was slowing down while the foreign reserves were rising.
She expressed optimism on the Federal Government’s sustenance of the growth trajectory, while she called for vigilance and focus so as to prevent the country from falling back into recession.
She said: “We are confident that if we diligently implement our economic plan, we will grow the economy. We have room to grow but other countries do not have rooms to grow.
“By 2019, the growth will be far more robust than the present level in 2018. We are therefore very optimistic in sustaining Nigeria’s economic growth. We are going to use this opportunity to grow our fiscal buffers, and particularly aggressively growing our revenue base.”
