ivolt:

Do you know the meaning of breakeven?


We lose nothing actually!

For future sake. Know that losses are only incurred when production cost is more than sales price.
It cost Nigeria 21 to 30 dollars to produce 1 barrel. Let's go with the higher price.
For how many years under Buhari has oil sold below $30 to warrant your loss narrative?

Buhari is borrowing with recklessness because he can. Nothing more.
He doesn't understand the concept of prudence in government.
For comparison, there is no administration in Nigeria's history that can fund Buhari's
extravagant budget regardless of oil price.

Unfortunately, most of his projects can't fund their own maintenance let alone repay
the loans used in funding them.

MT:
Buhari administration starts a major revolution in Nigeria. Building infrastructure. No country can be great without it. The direction is set. If all previous administrations have been building infrastructure and fighting corruption, the country would have been in a better shape. Remember, Buhari jailed governors from his own party. Tell me the previous president that has done that.

I am typing this from inside Lagos-Ibadan train. No hassle, seamless, air conditioning in top notch you will need to use a blanket. We are getting there, albeit slowly.

nedekid:

See, nobody says trains are bad. The issue is that the debt added to gdp is not worth it. The trains could have been built with PPP. The income generated by that train cannot maintain it, much more pay the worker or the loan debt.
Read that guys analogy of giving $20m each to ceramic importers to set up factories or to cassava unions. With less than 10% of the cost train line you generate industries, add to gdp, earn fx etc.
Anyway that is the difference with having a civil servant or government pickin in power vs a seasoned businessman.

mrvitalis:

And 80% of their containers n goods are moved by trucks or sea ...u think u know better ?

We already have locomotive trains which are idea for goods ...we just don't need expensive speed trains

mrvitalis:

USA the world biggest economy ....what's your point now ,?

DubaiLandLord:
Senseless question

tctrills:

No brother, go back and read again. We are actually trying to borrow $2billion to build kano to Niger that's over N1 trillion so that money isn't for capital projects but to run your rails ok

mrvitalis:

U are just being emotional ...Abuja kaduna has little or no economic basis ...same can be achieved by trucks if the roads are fixed for far less ...

Do u buy a car with loan before looking for work or starting a business ?

Is car not important ? Why not buy car before starting business ...that's exactly what Nigeria is doing

DubaiLandLord:
How much was used in constructing the Kaduna-Abuja? How much is it yielding?

AlhajiBitcoin:
This is very stupid talk.

Haha.

Assuming you constructed it with $3bn. And you are happy making N300m monthly.

That is about $600k to $700k monthly.

How are you going to repay $3bn with accrued interest

$3,000,000,000/$650,000.

4,615 months

Or

384 years.

Amaechi, can this loan be repaid in your lifetime? And you want to build another one into Niger republic!

How long does a rail engine last in service?

poiZon:

Buhari cant comprehend this.
Zombies and bmcs will think u r doing astro-economics.
But all what u said is just the plain truth, agro is the easiest way out from this economic crises, but buhari and his 40thieves r doing the opposite.
They think npower and conditional cash transfer is a big development that has happened to nigerians since Independence..

tctrills:

The Nigerian railway generates less than 1.5 billion naira yearly but needs 60 billion naira to operate. Don't be fooled by an incomplete story.

Damaski:
Then use it to pay China debts. Thanks

BAVOSKI:
And we're still borrowing when One infrastructure is giving us such amount of Money in A Month

mrvitalis:

That one is even worse ...the economics is baseless ...Nigeria don't need rail lines now

We need to rejuvenate our productiveness first , increase revenue and GDP then build rail

Is like borrowing money to buy car then starts looking for a job and house

Faiththatworks:
I read the analysis of someone about how it will take 115 years to complete the payment of the loan borrowed by Rt. Hon Ameachi, although the analysis is very sound and right,but there's an assumption that's missing.
The minister said there are plans to add 16 more trains,if and when that eventually happens,it will increase the income on the train.
Also with the removal of fuel subsidy almost certain to happen next year,there's a huge possibility the trains may just be cheaper than going on road.
God bless Nigeria

mrvitalis:
That's roughly $600k a month , that's roughly $7.2 million dollars a year. The project cost is around $850 million

so without maintenance , without paying anyone salary it would take 118 years to break even ......if we add salary n maintenance then you are looking at 300 years plus

850 million dollars to add 7.2 million dollars to our GDP is foolishness

With $850 million

We can give the top 10 ceramics importers $20 million each to build plants n stop importing ceramics .....this would save us $2 billion dollars yearly , plus boast GDP with over $3bn using only $200 million

Another $200million can be used to set up 10 cassava to ethanol factory giving that as loan to the biggest cassava farming unions ....we can be the biggest ethanol producer in the world ...with a potential to export over $2 billion ethanol and produce for local use also ...plus over 20,000 jobs

Same $200 million can be used to set up 10 to 20 cassava to glucose/ethanol plants ....we taking of a $70 billion dollars market we have absolutely great comparative advantage ...capture 15% of that that's over $10 billion a year industry

Rail lines are expensive luxury that never make profit we can't afford now

itsme01:


Which local refinery? Definitely not NNPC or Dangote

Laggafin:

Den it defeats ur argument.. cause u are promoting deregulation / subsidy removal as best economic stimulator .. and I'm telling u dat de diesel) kerosine sector has been derugalated and subsidies removed.. den why is it according to you.. this has not yet attracted investors to make it competitive and bring down the prices

AfonjaConehead:
[s]

Shattap and quit acting like and pretending that a garri school dropout like you knows what you are saying.. be a good boy and allow educated people with functioning brains comment, thank you very much

backbencher:


UAE has less than 20 million people and produces more oil than we do.

freeborn02:

But UAE gets rich on the same crude oil. How?

Laggafin:

We always quick to call out the telecon sector as a Sucess.. but don't u tink the success is nominal?? Moreso with de deregulation of Diesel and kerosine .. yet the prices of these commodities are still very high

Godfullsam:

I am not against subsidy removal. In fact, it is a welcome development all be it at the very WRONG time.

I am only against those who wants subsidy removed now because they are the same set of people who once criticised it.

backbencher:
1.The reason why we had issues in the 1980s was because we had a lack of Forex thanks to the oil price crash of 1982, which is what drove us into SAP in the first place.

2. A big reason why we don't have power and refineries is because both sectors charge subsidised tarrifs meaning they cannot make enough profit to expand, upgrade and improve themselves. ( GSM grew the way it grew because the goverment was not forcing them to sell at a loss in the name of subsidising the sector)

3. Subsidy has to go because the oil revenues aren't enough to fund it . And our tax to gdp ratio is too low to fund it as well. The only way we can find money for subsides is by goverment taxing the 70 percent who don't pay income tax to the federal government due to working in the informal sector.

And doing that is not politically popular in this country because we are all poor apparently.

itsme01:






Subsidy removal is important but we can't do it now

Primary responsibility of the Government is to see to the welfare of its citizens using any and every means necessary

United States won't mind piling up debt and selling bonds or going to war in the middle East to steal resources as long as American citizens get to enjoy life with best standard of living, enough social benefits and welfare

Already Land borders are closed, Naira are devalued over 200% , there is 2 digit inflation, gas electricity and other utility is at all time high removing subsidies without a local refinery is terrible move


.

HenryThegreat1:
Removal of subsidy will further impoverish the Nigerian poor, writes Ike Okonta
I am happy that Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, General Ibrahim Babangida’s Finance Minister in the 1980s, is alive and well. Dr Kalu, working closely with the then Country Representative of the World Bank, avidly promoted the Structural Adjustment Programme and ensured that General Babangida imposed it on the Nigerian populace. Kalu argued that the government had no role in the economy, that the Naira should be drastically devalued and that subsidies in the education and health sectors should be removed or drastically curtailed. He also called for the privatization of all public enterprises and the removal of tariffs on imports which the federal government had put in place to protect the local manufacturing sector.
Following the introduction of SAP in 1986, the value of the Naira crashed in the foreign exchange market. Local factories that were producing such products as automobiles, textiles and vehicle batteries closed shop. Privatised enterprises did not fare any better. They were subjected to asset-stripping and then abandoned while employees were left to fend for themselves. By the time General Babangida was forced by pro-democracy forces to leave office in August 1993, it was clear to suffering Nigerians that Dr Kalu and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had sold them a dummy. Nigeria had been forced back into the orbit of the international capitalist system as a marginal satellite that imported everything from toothpicks to automobiles from the Western countries while the fledgling steps she had taken on the path to industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s was abandoned.
Three decades later the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is still making common cause with the discredited World Bank. The government has served notice that it will remove subsidies on petrol and electricity in 2022. It claimed that the burden of subsidizing these two sectors is now too much for the government to bear and that in any case petrol subsidies was benefiting only the well-off. Then the government committed a blunder. It assured Nigerians that the sum of N5000 would be paid to 40 million poor Nigerians for one year to cushion the effects of the petrol subsidy removal. Alert public-interest economics did a quick calculation and found out that the amount of money that would ostensibly be expended in the payment to poor Nigerians would far exceed the yearly subsidy! Who is trying to fool who?

The core argument of President Buhari and the World Bank Country Representative in Nigeria is that the government has no business subsidizing utilities and that such sectors as electricity and petrol should be left to the vagaries of market forces. This is indeed the central position of Neoliberalism, the extreme right-wing regimen that late President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began to push soon after they were both elected into office in the early 1980s. Neoliberalism, it must be noted, is not about economics. Not at all. Stripped bare, it is a political strategy whose aim is to strengthen the grip of harsh capitalism on the world system and remove socialism as a contending political alternative. This was why Prime Minister Thatcher attacked trade unions in Britain in the 1980s and also sought to cripple the Labour Party. For his part, President Reagan drew up a strategy paper that was later christened ‘The Washington Consensus’ and pushed it to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to implement around the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union a few years later only strengthened the grip of this noxious extreme right political regimen globally.
It is interesting to note that the coming of President Joe Biden in January 2021 has served notice to Neoliberalism that its end has come. Within eleven months President Biden has steered two key bills through the US Congress – one designed to revamp public infrastructure and the other to give subsidies to such vital sectors as healthcare, childcare, and the environment. In short President Biden and the Democrats are arguing that Big Government is back; that the old practice of cosseting the rich at the expense of the poor and public welfare has come to an end. President Biden made it clear that he meant every word when, faced with rising inflation, especially the cost of petrol, he released strategic oil reserves in the US in a bid to force down the price of the product. He did not pay the slightest attention to right wing economists who wanted so-called market forces to continue to determine the cost of petrol in the US – to the detriment of the ordinary consumer.
I have always argued that President Buhari does not have a clear and definable economic strategy. His policies are made on the hoof; not properly thought-out and with the cares of the ordinary Nigerian as their primary focus. Unemployment is currently about 40 percent. Food inflation has further forced those lucky enough to have jobs to cut corners as they struggle every month with their meager salaries. Removing subsidies on petrol and electricity will only jerk up inflation even higher and worsen the plight of poor Nigerians who even now are hardly able to eat three meals a day. The key to prosperity in Nigeria are diversification of the economy through rapid industrialization and expansion and modernization of the agricultural sector. This will entail establishing a vigorous steel-manufacturing sector and ramping up electricity production beyond the current paltry 4000 megawatts.
The Buhari Presidency has not been able to take these steps. Instead it wants to further impoverish the Nigerian poor by removing the few subsidies they still enjoy. I urge the government to rethink this policy. In any case it is now a lame-duck government as fresh elections are already around the corner. The decision whether to remove subsidies should be left for the in-coming government in 2023. President Buhari has given his best and it is simply not good enough.

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2021/12/19/before-president-buhari-removes-petrol-subsidy/

backnbeta:
Buying bra is better than sharing deaths, hunger and poverty all over; at least the bras are not harming us directly. You are all thieves but they steal with a bit of humanity in them

Idiko1:
At least, the government in this discuss bought Bra while your silly government bought nothing.

majamajic:
No be only 79 , na 29
Someone that is around 100

sergio671:
As 2023 draws closer, it's becoming clearer that the muslim north has drawn up their plan to hold onto power come 2023. On both sides of the political divide, referring to the APC and PDP, there has been serious permutations and conversations about who the next president of nigeria will be. These conversations appear to made along party divides, however, the truth not being highlighted is that there is a slient agitation to keep power in the hands of the Muslim Ummah.

Had Nigeria been a muslim republic, this would not have been a problem. However, with the multiplicity of religious leanings and beliefs, and the degree to which this is the case, it is not out of place, but only fair, that participation and inclusivity is ensuered by all; not just institutionally, but also ethically.

Of course, the argument can be made that the choice of the next president should be a matter of competence and not religious or tribal considerations. This argument would have been plausible was Nigeria not standing on of religious, tribal cum regional tension lines. The calls for secession are only fueled by the disregard for these differences that have come to define who we are as Nigeria, and the unique identifiers that characterise each region. The case for one Nigeria can only be made the acknowledgment of the differences that exist among us, and an acceptance and enabling of each other for inclusive participation, progress and development.

So, where are the none muslim candidates? Why are the major parties silent about this reality? What exactly is the grand plan?

In my opinion if the major parties and thrir leading candidates are really interested in the unity and stability of Nigeria, they will insist on having a nonmuslim candidate. The ideal of natuonal interest trumping regional or religious interest should be demonstrated by this. True elderstatemen will clamour for the balance of participation and leadership.

Competence is key. And competence is not the exclusive preserve of any religion. All are equally competent, and all can actively lead.

I beg to submit that the emergence of another myslim president will further enable the lack of prace thag we are currently suffering; this, by no conscious or premeditated effort, but simply a reaction to the feelings of deprivation and exclusion that will characterize such trajectory.


Sergio671 wrote from and for Nigeria.