The Presidency yesterday reacted to the comment made by Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party over the 2019 Appropriation Bill presented to the National Assembly by President Buhari as flawed document.
The statement was issued by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity Femi Adesina in Abuja. Adesina disclosed it is regrettably, that Atiku presented no essential element and feasible solution to the known realities.
Adesina revealed, criticism by Atiku Abubakar on recession was a clear indication that Atiku, does not understand what recession mean in its context, while his comment on the budget was a mere playing to gallery to achieve cheap political point.
The Presidency added, “Atiku describes the fundamental assumptions of the budget as open-handed, wild and indefensible but does not suggest alternative assumptions that would have been more suitable. He argues that the economy is yet to recover from the 2016/2017 recession.
Adesina added, “Unfortunately, Atiku cannot formulate his own definition of an economic recession, which is a technical term with a generally applicable meaning. When an economy experiences two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, it is said to be in recession and whenever it returns to positive GDP growth of whatever rate, it is said to have exited recession. It is suspicious if Atiku understands the simple meaning of recession.
“Atiku attributes the sustained build-up to foreign reserves to ‘increases in international prices of Brent Crude and foreign borrowing.’ But he easily forgets that under the immediate past administration, oil prices were at an all-time high with significant growth in foreign borrowings, and yet foreign reserves was depleted from $62billion to as low as $24bn.”
