FG’s Budget Cuts Affects CBN’s 2016 Budget

CBN

There has been a 50 per cent slash to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s 2016 budget.

This was disclosed by the Director of Financial System Stability (FSS 2020), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Mohammed Suleiman, on Tuesday.

Suleiman said the budget cut by the federal government has affected funding of some important initiative in the financial system.

Speaking in Abuja when he led the FSS 2020 team on a courtesy call to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), he said funding had been a major constraint to FSS 2020 strategy implementation.

He said: “Funding has been a major issue, the FSS 2020 programme since its inception has always been bankrolled single-handedly by the CBN. The CBN is beginning to weary a little bit because the current budget this year was reduced by 50 per cent and that is majorly affecting some of our capabilities to implement some of these strategic objectives.

According to him: ”50 per cent of our budget cut is no small measure at all. We need to agree on the funding approach, we need to have a rethink and get the support of all implementing institutions. The FSS2020 is not a CBN project it is a financial system project, all financial system players have to take ownership of the project and be willing to support it.

Suleiman further added, “We will structure the FSS2020 to include dedicated team for monitoring, tracking and reporting and ensure regular quarterly or biannual meeting of stakeholders for the progress and implementation of the strategy.

Suleiman also identified some of the challenges the FSS2020 team have had to grapple with. They include: inadequate financial skills development particularly in the capital market; unavailability of investable funds for long term financial products; non existence of listing rules for special purpose vehicles; increasing cost of transactions and operations; weak risk management.

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