Addressing the second Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit, the former CBN Governor said that the amount earmarked for debt servicing in the 2017 budget was more than the revenue from non oil sector.
He added that Nigeria was getting more steeped in debt and had reached its borrowing limit leaving nothing to invest.
The economist said the current recession being faced by Nigeria and other African countries was occasioned by rising commodity pricing occasioned by China’s rising economic growth.
The Emir noted that there was Africa’s rising debt after the debt relief by the London and Paris clubs, adding that the economic growth would not come from borrowing but from local and foreign investments.
“Federal Government spends 66% of revenue on interest of debt leaving only 34% of revenue available for capital and recurrent expenditure. In the 2017 budget presented by the President the amount earmarked for debt servicing is in excess of the non oil revenue.
“The problem with the budget is that it goes for more debts considering that 66% is paid as interest from the nation’s revenue, that means, more debts will be accumulated for the country so where do we stop, 70%, 80%.
“As a country both national and state government level, the model of borrowing has reached its limit growth can only come from investment because you cannot continue to borrow unsustainably.
“You have governors who visit China on a month’s tour and eventually return home with MoUs for debts to invest in infrastructures that might not have direct impact on citizens.
“Borrowing to invest in light trains in regions like Northern Nigeria does not drive the economy but instead encourages them to join the trains to attend weddings or naming ceremony.
“At the end of the day, a nation and a state is only transformed by vision, once the vision is flawed every single thing that follows logically collapses,” he said.
In a keynote address titled ‘Promoting Investment in the Face of Economic Challenges,’ Emir Sanusi said if North West and North East were to be countries, they would be one of the poorest countries in the world, noting that Borno and Yobe states were poorer than Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
He said the two regions were backward in all human development indices such as adult literacy, maternal morbidity, infant mortality, girl child completion rate, per capital income and number of children out of school among others.
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