SAN FRANCISCO, May 05, (THEWILL) -Nigeria is considering further adjusting the crude oil benchmark for the 2020 budget to $20 per barrel barely two weeks after trimming it to $30pb from $57.
Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed made the disclosure Tuesday during her contribution to discuss at the “Citizens Dialogue Session on Government’s Fiscal Policy Decisions in Response to the Fall in Oil Prices and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
The webinar was organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance and National Planning in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL).
She added that the economy is expected to contract by at least 3.4% in 2020 largely due to cuts in productivity across the public and private sectors.
Nigeria largely depends on receipts from crude oil sale to fund payroll and expenditures but the coronavirus pandemic has hugely devastated the global economy and sent crude oil prices tanking to levels haven’t seen in decades.
“We are in the process of another adjustment that will see us bringing down the revenue indicator to $20 per barrel,” Zainab said.
She added that Nigeria is also seeking other avenues to shore up cash including lobbying international creditors for debt forgiveness and restructuring.
