Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said Monday, that for Nigeria to sustain the stability of its economy, it has to raise its excess crude account to $5 billion. The excess crude account which currently stands at $4.1 billion.

Speaking in Abuja, Dr. OKonjo-Iweala, appering before the Senate committees on Finance and National Planning, during consideration of the 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, as a working document for the 2015 Budget, also dismissed claims that the country was financially bankrupt in spite of some cash fluctuations it was experiencing.

She said, “Nigeria as a country has quite enough assets and I think anybody will agree to that. That is why when people say the country is broke, I say ‘absolutely not’ because if we wanted to mobilise any of our assets to cover, we could do that. Of course it could take a little bit of time. However, that does not mean that we cannot have some cash flow fluctuations, we just have to manage it because we have an economy that is reasonably self sufficient. We are able to manage ourselves well while everybody is willing to do a few things and we should be able to get there.”

She added that ,“My belief is, no matter what is settled on at this point in time, what is pleasing and that brings us all together is the realization that what we were trying to say a few years ago has happened and it is happening in front of us and all of us need to come together to find a solution.”

This she said when the committee asked whether the 2015 budget was workable.