The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said on Tuesday that the Federal Government spends N165 billion monthly on salaries.
Adeosun, who spoke at a Town Hall/Policy Dialogue for Good Governance organised by the Alumni Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, said there were 1.2 million public servants in the civil service when President Muhammadu Buhari government came into power.
She added that the government had been able to save N8 billion from the monthly pay roll of public servants due to various strategies introduced to block loopholes.
The minister said that the country’s present economic challenges was not peculiar to Nigeria, adding that the economies of most western countries were built out of their diversity.
She said, “Change can be extremely painful, but we must change.’’
She further added that to come out of the present economic challenges, there was the need for financial discipline as well as investing in capital to attract private capital investors.
Adeosun said the FG had no choice than to borrow to invest in the country’s infrastructure, explaining that this was the only way to create jobs.
“We have a very conservative borrowing programme; we will borrow conservatively so we don’t burden the future generation.
“We must borrow, not like in the past when loans were taken to pay salaries; we will this time, borrow to invest and build our infrastructures.’’
The meeting, which was attended by the Ministers of Agriculture and Rural Development, Power, Works and Housing, Finance, Information and Culture, Budget and National Planning and Foreign Affairs, was the sixth in the series of town hall meetings.
The ministers took time to brief the audience on what the Federal Government was doing in their various ministries to address the country`s challenges and improve the economy.
Also, traditional rulers, members of the Diplomatic Corps and Civil Society Organisations, among others, attended the meeting.
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