Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has expressed confidence in Nigeria’s economy under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, stressing that the country has gotten to a point where it does not care if oil prices rise or fall.
Adeosun who made the remarks during an interview with Bloomberg, said the country had learnt to live with oil prices at $45-$46 a barrel. As of 2pm on Friday, Brent crude, the international benchmark of crude oil was trading at $70.20.
“We’ve gotten to a point where we don’t care whether prices will be sustained at the level that they have recently risen to.
“We’ve been able to balance our budget at $45-$46 per barrel and we’ve got to learn to live comfortably at that level.”
The minister said Nigeria cannot afford to rely on oil prices anymore. “Yes, it’s at $66-$67 per barrel today, but we’ve been here before, right?” she asked. “And we can’t afford to be exposed to that, so I really try very hard to ignore the oil price.”
The oil benchmark for the 2018 budget is $45 per barrel. For the first time in 45 years, the federal government has projected that non-oil revenue will surpass oil revenue in 2018.
It is also seeking to plug an infrastructure gap of $25 billion, she said “…infrastructure gap is significant, it is far bigger than anybody had imagined, in power, in roads, in rail.”
