The planned financial intervention of the presidency to bailout states in distress would be fully implemented in a couple of weeks, the presidency says. In a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, the presidency said meetings are being held between members of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and also between CBN and commercial banks. According to the statement, the meetings were meant to determine the details of the special intervention fund and the debt relief programme of the President for states. The meetings were also reviewing loan profiles of the states, addressing issues weaved around restructuring of existing loans including time span, and reconciling the figures. “Already, it has been agreed that existing state loans be restructured for 20 years, and regarding the bond option, the rates to be applied will be market-based but with a cap to make it affordable. “Within weeks from now, the states are expected to start benefitting from two other parts of the presidential intervention,’’ the statement added. The presidential intervention would make available more funds to the state governments which otherwise would have been removed at source by the banks, Vanguard reports. Akande, explained that so far, the states have drawn from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas taxes and dividends which amounts to 2.1 billion dollars in addition to the N518 billion federation account allocation shared last week. He also recalled that during the last National Economic Council (NEC) meeting, the states were encouraged to take certain steps to avert similar financial distress in future. The steps include making the payment of salaries a first-line charge; increasing their internally-generated revenue; cleaning up their payroll to eliminate “ghost workers’’ and opening fully-functional Debt Management Offices. Nigerian governors had a closed-door NEC meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on Thursday, July 23 , at the presidential villa, Aso rock.
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