The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, says she is in support of the decision by her predecessor in office to stop the Export Expansion Grants (EEGs) that were once given to Nigerian exporters.
The EEG was put in place to encourage exports but the minster says it was stopped because it was being abused by exporters.
She explained her position on the EEG while responding to a team from the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) which had paid her courtesy call in her office. The Minister explained that, although her predecessor in office halted the implementation of the policy, she believed the decision was in order going by harvests of startling revelations on the abuse of export grant.
“On paper, why will you cancel Export Grant? However, in a situation, where we do not have control, we open up doors for the kind of abuse, which are only imaginable. We have people exporting stones, describing them as high valued goods, collecting an import credit and using that to import fish.”
“We do need to look for how to support export, but we have to be very realistic in the recommendations we are coming up with.”
She sought the understanding of members of the private sector in the ongoing policy review by the current administration.
Extending her hand of fellowship to the NESG, the Minister said the Ministry of Finance is ready to work with them and therefore challenged the private sector group to keep track of some of the recommendations to the Federal Government.
“I want to challenge you to keep track of how many of your recommendations are implemented and those not implemented. You also need to find out why those policies were not implemented. They may be great policies at wrong times, or they may be wrong policies. They may even be un-implementable policies.
