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sustainable financing of Nigeria’s membership subscription in the African
Union, AU.
The Federal Government also approved an extension of a Central Bank of Nigeria
intervention that will be used to support the power sector specifically the
generation arm of the sector.
disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of the
weekly FEC meeting presided over by the Vice president, Yemi Osinbajo at the
Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
percent as the new import levy on Cost, Insurance and Freight, CIF that will be
charged on imports coming into Nigeria from AU countries. She explained that
there are some exceptions on goods originating outside the territory of member
countries.
council meeting approved a new import levy for sustainable financing of
Nigeria’s membership subscription in the African Union.
import levy on Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) that will be charged on
imports coming into Nigeria but with some exceptions.
from outside the territory of member countries that are coming into the country
for consumption.
for aid and also it includes goods that are originating from non-member
countries but are imported through specific financing agreements that ask for
such kinds of exemptions. It also exempts goods that have been ordered and are
under importation process before the scheme was announced into effect.”
this new levy is to enable the African Union member countries pay on a
sustainable basis their subscriptions to African Union.
knowing that what will accrue from this new levy will be more than what is
required as subscriptions to the African Union, that the balance that will be
left will be ring first and put in a special account in the Central Bank of
Nigeria and will be used to finance her subscriptions to multilateral organizations
as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and
institutions like that.
in the revenue pool, it will be used to finance the budget.”
she said, “The second approval was the setting up of the steering committee to
be chaired by the Vice President for the design and implementation of a
national single window.
that would be able to integrate all the government agencies that are operators
that are implementers in the port business or trading in the port system.
efficiency of port operations and we project that it will significantly increase
government revenues.”
She said that the Council also approved an extension of a Central Bank of
Nigeria intervention that will be used to support the power sector specifically
the generation arm of the sector.
signed into as a country, where we have several guarantees to the Generation
Companies (GenCos) to bridge any gap that they have after the Nigerian Bulk
Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) has settled them,” she said.
Recall that the CBN had earlier stepped into the liquidity and funding
challenges facing the electricity sector and disbursed a total of N120.2
billion to different electricity distribution companies (DISCOs), power
generating companies (GENCOs), service providers and gas companies.
is under the N 213 billion Nigerian Electricity Market Stabilization Facility
(NEMSF), was made in 2016.
Government also signed power purchase agreements by the Nigerian Bulk
Electricity Trader (NBET) to signal activation of industry contracts for power
generation under a contract based market. Explaining on the AU levy, she said
that the African Union took the decision to enforce the levy by member
countries.
Nigeria is to domesticate and implement this decision that was taken in Kigali
on the 27th Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of African Union
meetings.
will open a central bank account for that particular purpose so all the funds collected
by the Nigerian customs will be pooled into that account.
when the AU raises a subscription invoice, we will settle from that account and
whatever is left, we can use it also to settle our subscriptions to other
multilateral institutions and if there is anything left, the balance is used to
finance the budget.
we got approval for today is to pay the gencos for any financing shortfall that
they have after the bulk trader NBET settles them. So it is a cost on
government, it is loan, government will be paying it back to the central bank.
“The
essence is to meet the contract obligations that government signed with the
gencos on the assurance we gave them on off taking any power that they generate
after payment is made from the NBET.”
The Vanguard.
