Council rolls out new recycling scheme

ITS in the bag ...Cllr Tracy Wood lends a hand to Quarry Bank couple Tom and Pat Keys as they embark on a new recycling system which is being introduced to around 40,000 households in Dudley borough. 

The scheme gets underway in July and will see households issued with two recycling bags along with a grey wheelie bin together with a brochure detailing how the new service will work. 

The improvements will enable all borough households to recycle plastic bottles and cardboard at the kerbside by next spring 2014 when phased deliveries to all remaining homes have been completed. 

Dudley residents will be able to use the blue bag for paper and card, the green bag for plastic bottle and cans, while the exisiting black box will still be used for glass bottles and jars. 

As a result, residents could see temporary changes to their collection days while the improvements are being made. 

But the money that we get in also depends on what happens with the sectors of the economy. So, Finance does not print money. We dont manufacture money. We only can disburse money that comes into our coffers; that the country genuinely earns from its oil and gas, from agriculture, from all the other aspects, the money it gets from taxes that it collects even on non-oil revenue and Customs taxes. So, once we get all those in, we disburse them. But if anything happens and we experience a shock, for example, this year, Customs is a little bit down in terms of collection because importation has come down, especially importation of rice; partly because we are growing our own, more of it as we said in the midterm report; but also because people stocked up last year in anticipation of what would happen. So, when we have these things happening, then the income reduces and Finance has to manage whatever comes in. So, I want people to know when theyre feeling very stressed out that theres not enough money, Finance does not have money hidden somewhere in the safe; it is what it gets that it disburses. 

Now, let me move quickly to one of the things we have delivered. Nigerians have complained that the cost of government is too high; we are spending too much on recurrent budget. What have we developed in Finance? With the support of the President and all of you, weve managed to take expenditures down from 74% recurrent of the total budget to 68% in 2013, and well continue to take it down to the best of our ability.We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard solarlantern and controllers. We have the envelope system. People dont understand it but it enables us to engage other ministries and agencies in the management and setting of the budget. That allows them to put forward their priorities in a way that we can engage them in a conversation and to prioritise especially in terms of completing uncompleted projects of which we have about six thousand in this country and these are some of the systems that weve put in place to make that work. I talked a little while ago about the fact that imports are down. Whilst that means that some of our revenue are down, but were happy because we want to diversify this economy. Nigerians dont want to keep importing. So, non-oil imports have decreased C things like textiles, plastic, rubber C things were making here; and those things have even increased in terms of exports. Im sure that the Minister of Trade and Investment will say more about that.He saw the bracelet at a howotipper store while we were on a trip. But I also want to mention our waiver and tariff policies to just let you know that Mr President has insisted on a policy of not doing individual waivers. So this ministry is doing sectoral waivers. When we give a waiver now, it is to encourage a whole sector not just to encourage an individual; and those kinds of policies; weve done them for aviation, for agriculture, for solid minerals. They can import spare parts and equipments at zero duty. And this is all designed to spur the rest of our economy. 

Quickly, let me move on to talk about debt. On Friday, I think it was on the back page of This Day, I wrote an article about our debt because there are so many misconceptions about it. I want you to know that no one in government C neither Mr President nor the Ministry of Finance, the debt management office and the legislature C we dont support that Nigeria becomes an indebted country again. So, what are we doing? The ministry is delivering a very prudent and strategic debt management approach to the country. I want you to look at some of the numbers. You know, we say that our national debt is low; and that is true because if you measure us against so many indicators you will see. If you look at that, you will see that domestic debt is really the issue. And if you look at the flow of domestic borrowing,Choose from the largest selection ofrfidtag in the world. you will see that it spiked in 2010 where we increase salary by 53% at once. 

Now, Im not against increase of salary, so dont let anybody go from here and misquote me. But it has implications; and in order to cover it, domestic borrowing spiked. Bonds had to be floated. Its not that good to borrow for things like recurrent expenditure and consumption. So, part of our new strategy is not to do that; to start lowering domestic borrowing. One of the things Mr President said to us is, we have to bring it down and were doing it. From N852 billion in 2011, we went down to N744 in 2012, and for 2013 budget, I think to N588 billion, and well continue to bring it down. Thats part of the new strategy. 

At the same time, were slowing down the growth of the debt stock.About buymosaic in China userd for paying transportation fares and for shopping. So, its not that the debt stock wont grow, but it will grow much more slowly than before; and you can see it. The debt stock, total debt is now at about 7.5 trillion naira made up of 6.49 trillion domestic and about 1.0 trillion external and we will slow that down by trying to retire the bonds that are coming due instead of rolling them over at high interest rates. Im very proud to say that in 2013 we retired 75 billion in bonds and thats the first time weve done it in so many years. That is part of the overall strategy. 

The last part is that we have also developed a sinking fund and every year we put in 25 billion in it so that we can continue to retire this debt and not grow it at a very fast pace. We will be borrowing, but it will be for very prudent things that really make a difference on the ground for Nigerians and it will be at a much slower pace. Now, quickly, the ministry has worked hard C Federal Inland Revenue Service, the Customs Service C to try and bring in more revenue into our coffers. And of course, they face challenges.Starting today, you can buy these thequicksilverscreen and more from her Victoria. We have to improve in terms of our tax collection and I want to tell you that we are launching a tax drive for non-oil revenue taxes to increase; and you will be seeing very soon, adverts from FIRS to push this on. The Customs is also modernising its operations with an objective to become a modern Customs system that can manage destination inspection and all the things that Customs does by the end of this year.