Bismarck Rewane, an economic expert, says there is actually zero growth between the budget of 2017 and that of 2018 which was presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday.

Rewane said this during Channels Television’s Politics Today, adding that the budget is not audacious or bold enough to be appropriately termed ‘budget of consolidation’.

He explained that while the 2018 budget of N8.6 trillion represents a 15.7 percent growth from that of 2017, the rate of inflation is expected to be at 15.9 percent in December, “so if you have increased your budget expenditure from N7.4 trillion to N8.6 trillion, which is 15.7 percent, effectively you have actually increased your budget by zero”.

“Secondly, a budget has five parameters: how much you expect to earn, how much you expect to spend, how much is the deficit, how do you fund the deficit and what do you use as a tool for economic management.

“When you judge all of this by the parameters that we have, this is a time for economic stimulus, which means that you have to be audacious, you have to be bold, you have to increase your spending.

“But not just for the sake of spending but impactful spending. What the President has outlined today is an impactful spending programme, but my fear is that it is not enough. It is not audacious enough. We got to go beyond that.”

Rewane further said that Nigeria should stop deceiving itself by saying that the exchange rate of the Naira to a dollar is N305.

“The problem I have with the budget is that it uses an exchange rate of N305. The effective exchange rate by that IAE window is N360. Let us stop deceiving ourselves that there’s an exchange rate of N305.

“The exchange rate today is N360 and N363 in the parallel market. We will not use the parallel market but let us use the IAE window.”

Rewane however said that the budget assumption of $45 dollars per barrel of crude oil is “very realistic because today oil is trading at $64 per barrel, which is 40 percent higher”.

“So, it’s a prudent budget, it’s a budget of consolidation but you only consolidate after you achieve the growth that you aspire to achieve,” Rewane said.

“We are not there yet, we are still at point five-five percent growth. What I can say is that the budget is impressive but it doesn’t go far enough.

“We need to be more bold and we have to be audacious to take the big leap. That’s what I think we should be doing.”