National Economic Council
NEC endorses Committee on Sovereign Wealth Fund
Jun 16, 2010, 13:14
| | The National Economic Council (NEC) at a meeting chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo at the State House, Abuja on Tuesday, June 15 approved the setting up of a committee to work out the modalities for the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF).
Minister of Finance Dr Olusegun Aganga who addressed the media in company of Governors Gabriel Suswan (Benue) and Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom) and Minister of National Planning Dr. Shamshudeen Usman stated that the committee has two weeks to complete its work and report back to the council in its next meeting for final approval.
The Minister for Finance explained that the State Governors would want to consult and then meet with a Committee of the Federal Government, which will include the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Minister of National Planning and the Minister of Finance who is the Chairman. It is the feedbacks from all the consultations with key stakeholders that are expected to be ready in the next two weeks.
Mr Aganga noted that the issue of SWF has been on the table since 2008 and that that over the period there have been consultations about the legality or illegality of the Excess Crude Account, which is one of the reasons why a school of thought moved to make it legal or more legal by having SWF.
“The primary reason for the Sovereign Wealth Fund is the concept for a country that has big infrastructural deficit to have a fund. But the issue is; how do we fund it? Where will it (funding) come from? It should not be tied exclusively to the excess crude account. The concept itself is there; we will talk about ways of talking it and we will talk about modalities in governance and other structural issues and that is what we have to do in the next two weeks,” he said.
Membership of the new committee include representatives of the Federal Government ; Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Minister of National Planning Shamsuddeen Usman and Minister of Finance Olusegun Aganga, representatives of the Governors’ Forum, which include the chairman and one governor from each of the six geopolitical zones.
Speaking on inability of some states to access the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) fund, Governor Suswan of Benue State explained that the situation is because those states are not able to pay the counterpart funding. He reported that the council has resolved that UBEC should move the fund to commercial banks who will lend it to the state governments in single digits adding that the State governments unable to access the fund can then do so.
On the issue of prisoners on death row, the Benue state Governor stated that the council urged state chief executives to review cases of such prisoners so as to identify those whose sentences could be commuted to life imprisonment and that the governors should not shy away from assenting to the execution of those to be executed while at the same time, review those cases that needed to be reviewed so that no innocent person is wrongly executed.
Clarifying the issue of reservations by some groups campaigning for an end to execution for condemned criminals, Suswan noted that there is no democracy without convicted criminals not getting hanged as capital punishment is the ultimate deterrence against violent crimes.
On the position of NEC on multiple taxation, Gov Akpabio disclosed that the Council approved a meeting of the Governors’ Forum, the Nigeria Police, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and the Joint Tax Board to iron out the issue.
Gov Akpabio explained that the involvement of the police is necessary because of the existence of many road blocks that affects movement of the farm produce from the North to the South noting that apart from the state governments, the police and paramilitary agents are involved in multiple taxation.
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