Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, has revealed that the government planned to scale back Ways and Means to deal with the problem of too much liquidity in the system.

Edun made the revelation while responding to questions after a meeting with investors at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC where he stated that the fiscal and monetary authorities were complementing each other to bring down inflation.

Reports of alleged misappropriation emerged last year over the N23 trillion Ways and Means loan obtained by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), a development some analysts suggest contributed to the country’s soaring inflation rate.

According to him, “We will pin down Ways and Means to alleviate the pressure of the excess money in the system.

“By so doing the two authorities are working hand in hand to bring down inflation and pressure on price stability and stabilizing the exchange rate, with the target of bringing down interest rate so that investors can borrow at a more affordable rate and getting the economy going in the right direction again.

“We need to borrow less and focus more on domestic resource mobilisation. We want long-term resources to avoid repayment and refinancing pressures.”

Ways and Means is a loan facility through which the CBN finances the federal government’s budget shortfalls.

The Minister continued, saying that the country’s GDP-to tax-ratio was too low—even lower than the average for the African region—and that as a result, reforms were in place to increase tax revenue by double over the next three years by streamlining taxation, utilising technology, and putting policies in place.

His words, “At 10 per cent to GDP, what should I say, it would appear as if some people are not paying their taxes.