Buhari to ramp up spending and borrowing

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari plans to “ramp up” spending and borrowing as the government grapples with “reviving an economy that shrank by the most in a quarter century last year due to the coronavirus pandemic”.

That’s how a leading finance news agency, Bloomberg, has reported about Mr Buhari’s budget speech in parliament.

Another agency, Reuters, has described it as “a record” budget of 16.39tn naira ($39.8bn; £29.2bn), with a “projected 25% year-on-year rise in government spending as the economy struggles with the impact of the pandemic”.