2025 budget will underperform, stakeholders caution

Economic stakeholders have projected that the 2025 proposed budget of N47.9 trillion may underperform due to its bullish assumptions.

In the proposed budget, the naira was pegged at N1,400 to the dollar and the crude oil benchmark of $75 just a few weeks after Donald Trump emerged as the president of the United States of America.

Donald Trump’s stance on increasing local production is expected to lead to a drop in the price of oil globally and a stronger dollar.

Senior Market Analyst at FTXM, Lukman Otunuga, asserted that Trump’s policy direction might impact Nigeria’s economic climate negatively.
He worried that Trump’s victory might pressure oil prices as he was seen pushing for a further increase in domestic oil and gas production, leading to increased supply in the long term.

Otuga said Trump’s policies could see a boost in US growth – triggering inflationary pressures.

“Should this prompt the Fed (the Federal Reserve) to keep interest rates higher for longer, a stronger dollar may drag oil prices lower as a result.
“This could be bad news for major oil-producing countries that acquire most of their revenues from oil sales. For Nigeria, the combination of lower global oil prices and a stronger dollar could add to its woes as it navigates a rough period,” Otunuga added.

Meanwhile, speaking after the Federal Executive Council meeting where the MTEF was approved last week, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, revealed that the government had pegged the crude oil benchmark at $75 per barrel, with an oil production target of 2.06 million barrels per day.

The average crude oil production in 2024, including condensates, has plateaued at 1.52mbpd as of September after dropping from 1.6mbpd in January.

Historically too, production has consistently dropped since the pandemic from 1.83mbpd in 2020 to 1.62mbpd in 2021, 1.38mbpd in 2022 and 1.47mbpd in 2023.

The budget also aims for a gross domestic product growth rate of 6.4 per cent.
However, Bagudu described the proposed budget estimates as conservative saying, “The fiscal objectives were conservative because we want to ensure that we study the course much as we believe the projections will be exceeded. The budget size that was approved for presentation to the National Assembly in the MTEP is N47.90tn, with new borrowings of N9.2tn to finance the budget deficit in 2025.”

Commenting on the proposed budget, an investment banker and stockbroker, Tajudeen Olayinka, said the debt sustainability challenge had become synonymous with Nigeria’s macroeconomic challenges in the immediate to near term with “high debt service to revenue ratio; unsustainable high interest rate regime; high cost of capital in the economy; more challenges to the supply side of the economy because of the way high interest rate filters into the supply side of the economy to disrupt it; etc.
“However, the borrowing could provide a mitigating factor to all the above-mentioned possible outcomes in the long run when deployed to projects that could produce positive net present value. This is where the real challenges to the economy lie.”

The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, reacting to the budget, said the N1,400 foreign exchange rate projection in the proposed 2025 budget was unrealistic.

LCCI Director-General, Chinyere Almona, urged the government to reassess the assumptions for the 2025 budget due to the challenges posed by high inflation and the exchange rate.

Also economist, Marcel Okeke, in a chat with Saturday PUNCH on Friday said, “The country is already over geared. That means we are borrowing more than we can carry.

“When you question these borrowings, somebody will tell you about infrastructure and then you ask if there is a target on the number of infrastructure that must be constructed within a specific time.

“Nobody gave that target. Like this Lagos-Calabar coastline road; who picked it as a priority project that must be done now? Who is interested in that when the old major roads are left to rot away?

“It is an avoidable pain that is being inflicted whether the people like it or not. Anyways, the N1,400 (foreign exchange rate) is not realistic. If they have pegged it at N1,600, where we are now, it can be accepted, but N1,400 is too optimistic. Again, the pegged price of oil is neither here nor there.”
Okeke who is also a sustainability expert added, “Talking about debt, we are putting ourselves into a bottomless pit in terms of borrowing and piling up debt.

Some people are already asking; how do you pay back? They just keep borrowing, and the National Assembly is just there to say go ahead.

“Also, the more the naira depreciates, the more the volume of debt and the burden of debt servicing and you know how the naira has been going down in the past year and from what I see now, there is nothing to make it strong.”