COVID-19: Lagos may lose N240bn, says Sanwo-Olu

The Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo – Olu , has
said his administration envisaged a N 240 bn revenue
decline in the state , as a result of the coronavirus
pandemic .
Sanwo – Olu said this during his keynote address at the
10 th annual public lecture of the Lagos State Public
Service Chapter of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of Nigeria tagged ‘ The Global Economic
Realities of COVID- 19 Pandemic , Lagos State as a Case
Study , ’ on Thursday .
The
governor , who was represented by the state
Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget ,
Samuel Egube , noted that though the 2020 budget had
contingency plans , it did not account for the
unforeseen pandemic .
Sanwo – Olu said , “ If one accounts for something
without an action , then one ’ s proper accounting has
not been done because the whole idea of accounting is,
first , to account for things , but by nature of the way
one has done so , it should be clear to one what kind of
actions one should take .
“ Once we saw it ( COVID- 19 pandemic ) , it was clear
that there was going to be an economic consolidation .
We saw that our potential revenue might go down by
about N 240 bn .
“ We saw that, if we moved and slashed that completely
across the board , we would have missed the plot
because it was going to be important to us to properly
account for what was happening at present and what
the effect of that would be. ”
According to him, due to the imminent fallout from the
drop in worldwide economic activities , including
falling crude oil prices , naira devaluation, and rise in
prices of import- dependent goods and services , the
state government had to take measures.
He said , “ Public and private investments were going to
be threatened because , in an uncertain environment ,
investments do not move ahead. But the culmination of
all of these was that it was going to throw a spanner in
the works of our drive to keep up employment .
“ We needed to take three steps to respond to that :
One , we needed to maintain a strong pandemic
response. In other words , we were not going to run
away from the fight . Two , we wanted to restart the
Lagos State economy . Three , we wanted to reimagine
the way Lagos operates , going forward . ”