Nigeria

Senate raises concerns over plan to sell national assets to fund 2021 budget

Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 3:23 PM by Kess Ewubare

- The Senate has reacted to the proposed plan by the government to raise money through the sale and concession of national assets

- The lawmakers are calling for transparency in the process

- The Senate said it would like to monitor the process so that nobody would feel cheated

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The Senate has raised concerns over the plan by the federal government to sell and concession national assets for the purpose of funding the 2021 budget.

The Senate committee on privatisation on Tuesday, November 17, said the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) never consulted it over the issue, The Guardian reported.

Senate faults plan by FG to sell national assets to fund budget
Source: Facebook

The committee chairman, Theodore Orji said:

“The position of the Senate Committee on Privatization is that we are not aware of the arrangement by the BPE to either concession or put for outright sale some national assets in the country in order to fund the 2021 federal budget."

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The chairman said the committee has to ascertain whether due processes were followed in the arrangement to sell the assets.

Orji stated that the committee would scrutinise the papers to see whether the proposed sale of the assets is fair or ridiculous.

The panel pointed out that it is important for the assets to be sold to people capable of handling them to avoid a repeat of faulty sales in the past.

The Senate said:

“A good example is the situation we are experiencing with the paper mills. None of them is working again today because I don’t think the people who bought them are capable. If Nigerians who are capable of managing our national assets are interested, let us sell to them at a reasonable price so that nobody would feel cheated.”

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s inflation rate has jumped to 14.23% (year-on-year) in October 2020 from 13.71% recorded in September 2020.