By Friday, 25 Jun 2010

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, on Thursday said that the need to mitigate the effects of the global liquidity crunch on the economy and address the issue of infrastructure gap were the major reasons the estimated expenditure in the 2010 budget was expanded over that of the preceding fiscal years.

He said the capital expenditure was prioritised to avoid distributing resources too thinly across too many initiatives, with the allocation of about 90 per cent of ministries, departments and agencies‘ capital expenditure to five key priority sectors, critical infrastructure, human capital development, land reform and food security, physical security, law and order; and the Niger Delta.

In his goodwill message at the Nigerian Economic Society seminar on budget 2010 organised in Lagos to pave the way for attaining the Vision 2020 goals, Sanusi said the budget intended to moderate the cost of doing business in Nigeria through interventions in critical infrastructure.

These, he said, included improvement in power generation, transmission and distribution; expansion, management and maintenance of new and existing power plants; investment in upgrading railway networks, road projects and maintenance works and alternative routes for the transportation of goods and services.

(Source:Punch)