Obasanjo says he ready to work with IMF

Nigerian president-elect Olusegun Obasanjo today told visiting International Monetary Fund Managing Director Michel Camdessus he was ready to work with the Fund “as long as” it helped Abuja achieve its goals, Reuters reported.

However, Reuters said Obasanjo did not specifically state his commitment to an IMF-monitored programme agreed in January by the outgoing military administration.

In Abuja yesterday, Camdessus told the international business community that the Fund was ready to help Abuja “if Nigeria implements the plan it submitted”, AFP said. That plan is for a programme of agreed economic policies that would be monitored by IMF staff.

Military leader General Abdulsalami Abubakar said yesterday he hoped to sign a three-year IMF deal before leaving office on 29 May. His finance minister, Ismaila Usman, told the same business leaders that Nigeria wanted an IMF-approved Medium Term Ecomonic Strategy (MTES) package, after implementation of the SMP. AFP said the MTES was a prerequisite for seeking debt relief.

Usman said Nigeria’s foreign debt stood at US $28.8 billion. He added that MTES would set out government economic policies, from privatisation to economic diversification, monetary and other macroeconomic targets, spending priorities in key sectors and transparency in government accounts.