Recession: Think outside the box, Buhari tells ministers

President Muhammadu Buhari has told his 36 ministers to think outside the box in order to save the country from the current economic recession.

Buhari said this while addressing his ministers at the Ministerial Retreat on the Economy and the Budget at the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja on Thursday.
He said, “Indeed, the challenges we face in the current recession require ‘out-of-the-box’thinking, to deploy strategies that involve engaging meaningfully with the private sector, to raise the level of private sector investment in the economy as a whole.“We are confident that the level of private investment will grow as we are determined to make it easier to do business in Nigeria by the reforms we are introducing under the auspices of the Presidential Committee on Ease of Doing Business.

”The President said the theme of the retreat, “Building Inter-ministerial Synergy for Effective Planning and Budgeting in Nigeria,” was very apt and timely, especially as “we arein the process of developing the 2017 Budget.

”He said over the years, there had been a mismatch between planned targets and budgetary outcomes at the national and at the level of various sectors.Buhari lamented that federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies had not benefited significantly from working together and building consensus around common national objectives thereby impeding the developmentof the country.