Sovereign Wealth Fund Grows by $500m–Osinbajo

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

For the past two years, a total of $500 million has been added to the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), while $87 million has been added to the Excess Crude Account (ECA).

This information was revealed by the Acting President, Mr Yemi Osinbajo, during his Democracy Day speech on Monday, May 29, 2017.

Mr Osinbajo said the President Muhammadu Buhari administration ensured these funds were saved in the interest of the future of the country.

“We have taken very seriously our promise to save and invest for the future, even against the backdrop of our revenue challenges, and we have in the last two years added $500 million to our Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and $87 million to the Excess Crude Account (ECA),” the Acting President said in his speech, which was broadcast on both television and radio on Monday morning.

He emphasised that, “This is the very opposite of the situation before now, when rising oil prices failed to translate to rising levels of savings and investment.”

Mr Osinbajo further said, “The Efficiency Unit of the Federal Ministry of Finance has succeeded in plugging leakages amounting to billions of Naira, over the last two years. We have ended expensive and much-abused fertilizer and petrol subsidy regimes.”

He added that, “We are also institutionalizing safeguards and deterrents. We have expanded the coverage of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

“We have introduced more efficient accounting and budgeting systems across the Federal Government. We have also launched an extremely successful Whistleblower Policy.”

The Acting President noted that this administration’s work on the economic front has been targeted at a combination of short-term interventions to cushion the pain, as well as medium to long term efforts aimed at rebuilding an economy that is no longer helplessly dependent on the price of crude oil.

He highlighted the short-term interventions to include putting together a series of bailout packages for states to enable them bridge their salary shortfalls – an issue the President has consistently expressed his concerns about.

“We also began the hard work of laying out a framework for our Social Intervention Programme, the most ambitious in the history of the country.

“One of the first tasks of the cabinet and the Economic Management Team was to put together a Strategic Implementation Plan for the 2016 budget, targeting initiatives that would create speedy yet lasting impact on the lives of Nigerians,” he told Nigerians.