FG Moves to Fix Budget Numbers Amid Fast Growth
By Patience Ikpeme
Nigeria’s top economic managers gathered in Abuja on Monday and agreed to set up a new committee that will bring order to the way government agencies work out the numbers used to plan the national budget. The decision came just as fresh data showed the economy growing at its fastest pace in almost two years.
The agreement was reached during the regular meeting of the Economic Management Team, popularly known as the EMT, which is the federal government’s main platform for coordinating economic policy across ministries, the Central Bank and other government agencies.
The EMT was created in October 2023 and is chaired by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, a position now held by Taiwo Oyedele. He took over from Wale Edun in April 2026 as part of a cabinet reshuffle by President Bola Tinubu. The team has 14 members in total, including the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu; the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso; the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole; the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari amongst others.
At Monday’s meeting, the team traced part of Nigeria’s budget problems to a simple but serious issue. Different government agencies have been using different figures for crude oil price, oil production volume, exchange rate, inflation and non-oil revenue when they prepare their projections.
A statement from the EMT Secretariat said this problem came to light during a joint budget retreat and a technical review workshop, which found that budgets often missed their targets partly because agencies were not working from the same set of numbers.
To deal with this, the EMT approved a new inter-agency committee whose job will be to bring all government bodies to a single, agreed set of assumptions. The committee will also be expected to sort out cases where government reports different figures internally, to the public, and to outside parties such as investors and international lenders.
The push for cleaner numbers is coming at a time when Nigeria’s economic figures are looking better than they have in years. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the economy grew by 4.43 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, the strongest quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2024. In dollar terms, that works out to growth of about 17 percent for the first half of the year.
Nigeria’s foreign reserves have also climbed to over 54 billion dollars in early September, the highest level in almost 18 years, according to the Central Bank. The naira has grown stronger as well, now trading in the 1,300s to the dollar, its best position in about two years.
There is more good news on the international front. FTSE Russell, the global index provider, has moved Nigeria from “Unclassified” back to “Frontier Market” status, a change that takes effect from the market’s opening on 21 September 2026. This marks Nigeria’s return to the index after about three years away, and it is expected to make Nigerian shares more visible to international investors.
The EMT was also told that government debt remains below 40 percent of the size of the economy, and that Moody’s, the credit rating agency, has changed its outlook on Nigeria from stable to positive. Team members noted that when measured in purchasing power terms, Nigeria’s economy is worth more than 2.2 trillion dollars, a figure officials say shows the country’s potential to reach the government’s target of a 1 trillion dollar economy, measured in ordinary dollar terms, by 2030.
Beyond setting up the new assumptions committee, the EMT agreed to take on a wider set of responsibilities going forward. The team will review overall economic performance, work more closely with the Central Bank to match fiscal and monetary policy, track progress on the government’s Renewed Hope Agenda, and regularly assess the government’s financing needs. The team will now meet every month instead of only when required, and each meeting will include a review of at least two key economic sectors.
On the question of who is responsible for Nigeria’s official statistics, the EMT settled on a clear arrangement. The Ministry of Finance will now serve as the central custodian of national economic data, while individual agencies remain responsible for collecting their own figures. Those figures will then feed into a single, coordinated public release, with the goal of ending the confusion that sometimes arises when different agencies put out slightly different versions of the same statistic.
Agriculture also featured strongly in the meeting. The team reviewed a plan to grow the sector’s contribution to the government’s 1 trillion dollar economy target by 2030. The plan involves cutting down on food that goes to waste after harvest, expanding processing and the use of machines on farms, tightening compliance so that Nigerian farm produce can meet export standards, and making sure government funding reaches farmers before planting season rather than after it. On financing, the team looked at plans to recapitalise the Bank of Agriculture and set up a new lending window for smallholder farmers, alongside a target of raising agriculture’s share of private-sector lending to 10 percent by 2030.
The meeting also covered Nigeria’s preparations to host two major trade events in Lagos. The Creative Africa Nexus, known as CANEX, is billed for November 2026, while the Intra-African Trade Fair is scheduled for November 2027. Organisers expect both events to attract large numbers of exhibitors and international buyers, with the Intra-African Trade Fair also expected to draw African heads of state and generate significant trade and investment deals.
The Ministry of Finance has been tasked with coordinating funding and customs arrangements for both events, working alongside the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment on a joint action plan with named officials responsible for each part of the preparations.
Speaking after the meeting, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy said the new arrangement for harmonising assumptions would make government planning more reliable.
“Today’s decisions tighten the link between the numbers we plan with and the actual outturns,” the minister said. “A single, harmonised set of assumptions across the fiscal and monetary authorities means fewer surprises in the budget and more credible planning for investors and all Nigerians.”
