FG slashes petroleum subsidy by N771bn as product landing costs slide

The Nigerian government has slashed the amount that it would pay for petroleum subsidies in 2015 by N771 billion to N200 billion, with the hope that landing costs of oil products would continue to drop as oil prices drop.

The N200 billion which is against N971 billion paid in the current 2014 fiscal year, is contained in the 2015 budget proposal awaiting appropriation before the National Assembly.

Government is also proposing to draw down about half a billion dollars (N80 billion) from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and borrow N570 billion to finance the 2015 fiscal deficit put at 0.79 percent, which is however down from 1.24 percent this year.

This comes as

Luxury tax to fetch N10.56bn as FG unfolds 2015 budget

The Nigerian government, in 2015 hopes to raise N10.56 billion additional revenue from levies on luxury items – one of the strategies it is adopting to shore up revenue to manage the economy in the light of present shocks coming from falling oil prices.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, co-ordinating minister for the economy and minister of finance, announced that beginning next year, a 10 percent import surcharge would be imposed on new private jets and that this is estimated to yield about N3.7 billion to the federation revenue.

The government has also slammed a

Finance Minister to present 2015 Budget today

Finance minister and co-ordinating minister for the economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, will today present the 2015 budget estimates separately to the two chambers of the National Assembly.

The total budget figure to be presented by the minister is N4.357.96 trillion. Out of this amount, government proposed N627billion for capital expenditure and N2.622 trillion for recurrent expenditure.

The Federal Government had  returned the revised 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) to the Senate to ratify the adjustments carried out on the document, in tandem with  current realities in the oil market.

This is the second time President Goodluck Jonathan has

How FG arrived at $73 per barrel benchmark price for crude oil

The Federal Government through the minister of Finance and the Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced last Sunday, some measures to insulate the economy from the oil price slump.

A key measure announced was a cut of the 2015 oil benchmark price from $78 to $73 per barrel. BusinessDay investigations reveal that this measure was not reached in a haphazard or rushed manner, but based on statistical analysis – an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model, and carried out over several months.

The new benchmark price is based on

Okonjo-Iweala confident 2014 GDP growth will exceed 6 percent

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, says she is confident that growth in 2014 will be around the government’s latest forecast of 6.5 percent after discounting the economic impact of the insurgency waged by Boko Haram.

“We are confident it will be better than 6 percent and about 6.5,”  Okonjo-Iweala said in a Reuters report.

The government’s latest forecast set in the past few days, puts 2014 growth at 6.5 percent, she said, adding that the forecast already discounted the impact from the Boko Haram insurgency.

Okonjo-Iweala said