Co— ordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi OKonjo-Iweala has said the audit report on the $10.8 billion unaccounted oil money would be ready at the end of this month.
Okonjo-Iweala who spoke at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2014 with the theme: Consolidating the Continent’s Rise, in London yesterday, said the huge attention the $10.8 billion had generated necessitated the appointment of Price Water House Coopers to carry out a forensic audit which should be ready ending of this month.
According to her, “Initially it was $48 billion, then $20 billion, but the figure we have always had is $10.8 billion. As the Minister of Finance, if money is missing, we should find out what happened to it and that was why when we went to the Senate to demand for forensic audit, the President supported it and gave us the go ahead.
“We engaged PwC with the Auditor-General taking the lead. They initially asked for 16 weeks to compete the work, they have spent 12 weeks so far and they will be done in a couple of weeks.”
On Ebola
On Ebola, the Minister appreciated the efforts of President Goodluck Jonathan at containing the virus from getting out of control.
She said: “Nigeria did a great service by....
stopping Sawyer who was Minnesota bound. Ebola cannot be said to be the real elephant in the room as it has been hyped beyond proportion by the media.”
On her part, the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, Ms Arunma Oteh, described Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs as the future engine of Nigerian economy.
Focus on development
She said: “Nigeria is focusing more on development as a way of creating more jobs and improving the standards of living of their citizens because it recognises that SMEs are vehicles for wealth creation which could in turn improve the economy of the country.”
She said: “I think first and foremost is the recognition globally about the importance of SMEs because they are the ones who create jobs. I think there is a greater focus on how SMEs can be supported. In our own country, President Goodluck Jonathan recently set up an SME council and a job board.
All of that is on how we can practically address the challenges we are facing with SMEs.”
To grow these SMEs therefore, the SEC boss believesd that the capital markets were the best remedy to source for funds among other benefits of the market.
“We need to provide funding at reasonable cost. Capital that is patient for people to grow their businesses but banking sector is not patient. What we need is capital that would be there for a long time, a market-based finance is a long term one and that fact is globally acknowledged.”
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