Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, yesterday, said contrary to the practice in the past, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer dictates programmes for Nigeria to implement.
The minister said this yesterday when she accompanied the IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, on a courtesy call on the leadership of the House of Representatives. She was accompanied on the visit by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama. She also added that Nigeria decides her policies and the pace at which they will be implemented.
Lagarde is on her first visit to Africa, starting with Nigeria. After assuming the seat of the managing director of IMF, following the resignation of Dominic Strauss-Khan, Lagarde noted that the IMF has evolved over the years to more of an organisation that partners rather than dictates.
Okonjo-Iweala, said “We are now partnering with an institution that is here to listen and help us. We set the policies, we set the pace, and they support us to do what it takes for the Nigerian economy to grow. The idea of the IMF telling people what to do is no longer what happens and so, we are happy to partner with this institution.”
Continuing , she said the organisation plays the role of assessing programmes and policies of governments across the world, and Nigeria is one of them.
Lagarde, in her remarks, noted that the organisation has changed from being the IMF which used to dictate to countries, as a money lending organisation to one that has partner relationship with countries.
According to the IMF boss, “I have to say IMF is a different institution from what I knew many, many years ago. It is a different institution because it was known for lending money and designing conditionality and imposing programmes. In doing so in the past, it made mistakes.”
In his remarks, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Aminu Tambuwal urged the new IMF managing director to, “Ensure that the financing instruments of the Fund are more responsive to the needs of African countries by increasing the concessions in the Fund’s lending to low-income countries in addition to extending the zero-interest rate policy.”