Senate Will Make Key Recommendations on Economic Recession – Saraki

The Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, yesterday in his opening speech to the Senators of the 8th Senate on their resumption from their annual break said that the Senate must be able to make key actionable recommendations to the Executive on way forward out of recession.

In Saraki’s opening speech to the Senators of the 8th Senate on their resumption from their annual break noted that ‘the collapse in oil prices from over $100 per barrel to about $48 recently meant the economy would experience weighty challenges’.

Sovereign savings have compounded the situation with foreign exchange reserves having declined from over $65bn in 2007 to about$30bn by 2015 and subsequently to $24.871bn on September 2016. he said.

The economy has drifted into recession and with GDP growth in the second quarter of 2016 at -2.06% following a decline of 0.36% in the first quarter, the economy has had consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Senator Saraki said that the response of the Senators to the current challenge must be dictated by the urgency of the hardship that the people suffer on a daily basis. He suggested an urgent debate on the way forward.

He told his colleagues that in having such debate, they must resist the temptation of drowning the debate with apportioning blames that will neither bring solutions to the problem or reduce the cost of rice, maize or oil in the market.

Saraki insisted that the debate must be solution driven, people oriented and less political. The simple questions for the debate according to him must be; How do we tame the widespread hunger in the land? How do we save our businesses from collapse? and how do we save jobs for the majority and create even a little more?.

According to Saraki, “Our people don’t care about our politics, they don’t care about our political affiliations, they don’t care if we are APC or PDP, north or south. What they want according is for us to lead the way out of this crisis and deliver on the promises that we made to them”.

The Senate President expects that by the time the debate is concluded, the Senators must have been able to make key actionable recommendations to the Executive on what they noted as the way forward in the immediate, mid term and long term solutions to the economic situation.