UBA advices FG on 1988 budget and SAP

The United Bank of Nigeria, UBA, has advised the Federal Government to ensure the proper implementation of the 1988 budget in order to realise the set objectives of SAP. According to the bank’s monthly Business and Economic digest for January 1988, “it is pertinent to warn that should the implementation of the 1988 budget follow the pattern of the 1986 and 1987 budgets, with no visible progress made either to resume the production and export of the company’s abundance Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, reserves to supplement crude oil revenue or to commence the local production of petrol-chemicals and flat steel, the SAP will not have placed the economy along the path of self-sustained growth.”
Continuing, the UBA said, given that Nigeria’s erstwhile Import Substitution Industrialisation, ISI, failed because it was based on imported inputs, then it stands to reason that the persistent dormancy of these key projects is not in Nigeria’s interest.
According to UBA, it is sad to observe that the achievement so far recorded under the SAP are largely peripheral.”
The UBA further said that up till now one of the three pillars of a self-propelled industrial take-off of the economy have been seen to have been errected.
The 1988 budget the bank observed may be the last of the SAP budgets, if the July termination date of the SAP is anything to go by as a result of the budget must be strictly implemented to realise the objective of SAP.
It said that from the contents of the 1988 budget it appears there is course to be optimistic that 1988 will be better than 1987. This, the bank said, depends on the successful implementation of the budget. This will further be influenced by a number of factors, such as the situation in the world market, the extent to which the country’s non-oil revenue is repatriated to the country.