Minister Of Finance: States may get budget support loans of N50 billion from government

Although the nation’s economy continues to falter amid threatening recession, relief may be on the way for cash-strapped states of the federation as each of them may, under some conditions, get budget support loans of up to N50billion from the Federal Government.

Disclosing this at the launch of a new stimulus package to reflate the economy and further bail out cash-trapped states struggling to meet basic obligations like the payment of wages and meeting servicing of debt liabilities , entitled ‘Fiscal Sustainability Plan’ the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, said the new fiscal stimulus  would be conditional liquidity support designed by the government to support states willing to embrace transparency and cost- cutting strategies in the management of their resources.

She spoke at a meeting with states’ finance commissioners in Abuja yesterday.Accordingly, states willing to key into the scheme must fulfill certain basic prudent requirement like showing evidence of how they have kept their books of accounts, including how the security votes were spent as well as design new workable alternative sources of internally generated revenue as opposed to the over-reliance on allocations from the Federation Account for the funding of their budgets.