President Muhammadu Buhari has said it will cost Nigeria $100 billion to finance the country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This is the first time the Federal Government is putting a figure on how much will be spent on the United Nations-endorsed programme.
Buhari made this known at the 52nd National Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in Abuja yesterday.
The President, who was represented by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, explained: “It is on this very account; the National Development Plan (2021-2025) and associated strategies have been put in place to reflect emerging threats and opportunities and develop a clear path to reaching the nation’s goals and priorities.”
This has put to rest to speculations on how much it would cost to finance the SDGs.
According to Samuel Ajala of Dataphyte, “One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the achievement of the goals is that the country requires $350 billion to achieve the goals.”
Ajala noted that $350 billion is about 800 per cent, more than the country’s 2022 budget and 37.28 per cent of the budget would be financed by debt.
However, Buhari has said the Federal Government is committed to the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and the SDGs.
This commitment, he said, was what culminated in the recent launch of the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF).
The goal of INF, he said, is to enhance revenue collection at the national and sub-national levels.
“To digitalise, optimise and make the tax system much more effective, better coordinate the budget processes, and make public spending much more effective”.
Buhari noted that “a vital component of the sustainability agenda is financial sustainability”.
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As a result, he called for ICAN’s support “to ensure economic sustainability becomes a national culture”.
On the part of the Federal Government, Buhari stated that the National Development Plan has advanced strategies to intensify the transition and drive toward financial sustainability.
According to Buhari, “We must deepen the revenue base of the economy through broader and strategic diversification”.
The President acknowledged the importance of the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission to catalyse Corporate and sub-national bond issuance.
He, however, lamented that “the total issuance size of Federal, state and Corporates are relatively small, given the global appetite and increasing awareness around sustainability”.
He was optimistic that “there will be more traction”.
To ICAN, Buhari said “combating wastage and mismanagement is a crucial component of financial sustainability, and the accounting profession does have a sacred responsibility in this regard”.
Sustainability reporting, he said, is becoming a growing reporting area in the business world. The growing momentum toward increased organisational disclosure of environmental, social, and governance information, he said, has made more companies see the need to report on their ESG operations.
ICAN President Mallam Tijjani Musa Isa noted that with the growing interest in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues and the increasing desire to transit to net-zero, investors are re-evaluating their resources channels because of the consequences of social and economic distortions on growth and development.
“There is the need for our economy to revisit our environmental, social, and governance priorities. Nigeria should consciously deploy resources in creating the regulatory and infrastructural environments that encourage the transition to net-zero business models by enterprises.”
He said: “This would avail the dual advantage of attracting more sustainable funds into the country and enhancing social licence – the perception by stakeholders that businesses and industries are acting in a way that is fair, appropriate, and deserving of trust.”