 Contrary to the budget joining us to discuss the 2024 budget and Mr. Edum's optimism about reducing reliance on borrowing and increasing revenue is Dr. Fermi Egbeshola, President, Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria. Good evening Dr. Fermi. Good evening and thank you for having me. We're really happy that you're able to join us and use now tonight. Is there anything to celebrate about this budget considering that it seems a bit rushed? Well, rush may be relative in the sense that by our constitution the budget supposed to be passed and signed before the end of fiscal year. So having the budget been signed this time before the end of the year to me is like resetting the cycle of a budget from January to December which is right and I think it deserves commendation but not the government of the homes of now seeing to the implementation of the budget and ensuring that they rely more on revenue and less on borrowing as they have promised. Oh, okay. So the lawmakers increased the budget from 27.5 trillion Naira presented by the President in November to 28 to 7 trillion Naira, a difference of about 1.2 trillion Naira. So what's your take on this? Well, if there is need the legislation has the rights to increase the budgets if there is a real need for it but the question is who is really asking question on why the budget is being raised, what it is meant for and who is going to supervise the use of the raised budget. So the budget has been spent from taxpayers money. So the taxpayers need to continually ask questions about budget raise. So I think it is time for us to be more responsible as citizens of the country to be asking more questions. If the budget has a 1.2 trillion extra raise, we should know for certainty what this budget raise is for, how it will spend, who are the stakeholders that will join government in monitoring the implementation of the raised budget and to monitor the effectiveness or review of this budget at the end of the exercise, then we can actually justify if the raise is reasonable or otherwise. Okay then. Now the Nigerian government has in recent years relied on advances from the CBN to show up a budget deficit amid dwindling revenue. I want you to join the answer with this coming question which is a bit long but I know that you will be able to take the two together. So before the expiration of his tenure from a president, Mohammad Abu-Hari, he requested the Nigerian Senate to approve the securitization of the CBN's 22.7 trillion Naira debt by converting it to a 40-year bond. Now the International Monetary Fund had cautioned about the CBN's use of ways and means to finance the deficit, complicating inflation containment efforts. Now with President Inoubo, the ways and means has been eliminated by taking the funding that is required from the market as opposed to the printing of money by the central bank of Nigeria. This should be good news to Nigeria, isn't it? Of course it is. Bringing that aid to ways and means of raising fund is the best way to go. We have so much resources in this country such that government can always raise enough revenue if they are strategic about it. It means we can continue to widen the tax net. It means continuing to look at other ventures and governments and Nigeria can diversify into to increase revenue. And that's the best way to improve our economy. That's the only way we can continue to attract investors to the country. And we also optimistic that next year, now that this year, right now, that Dango to Refinery will also begin to begin the operations, we will expect to see that more are going to cut down imports and import to the country and have more trade surplus in the country that we will be able to push on some of these reasons why we have ways and means before now. So it's the best way to go and we look forward to having this becoming a part and custom of our budget from now onward. Hello. I hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.