By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed has restated the commitment of the federal government to improving the welfare and wellbeing of Nigerian women.
The Minister restated this on Thursday at the inaugural edition of the International Professional Women Conference which had the theme “The Roles of Professional Women in Nation Building”.
According to her, access to finance and promoting gender equality has been the key area of focus for the current administration.
“Under the leadership of His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, the Federal Government of Nigeria has developed and is supporting targeted interventions in the following key areas: Access to financing and capacity building for women-owned businesses, particularly MSMEs through the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the MSME Survival Fund and the Women Empowerment Fund;
“Boosting financial inclusion and financial literacy amongst women and girls, particularly since women’s financial inclusion is a key driver of inclusive and sustainable development; and also Improving human capital development outcomes for women and girls through targeted government spending in line with Government priorities in key sectors including health and education;
“Similarly, Ensuring that our fiscal policies and public financial management processes are more gender-sensitive particularly in the areas of budgeting, implementation, and M&E; Ensuring equal access to information; and Closing the digital gender gap.
“At the level of the Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, we are actively engaged with the Central Bank of Nigeria in promoting financial literacy in the population, especially amongst women. The Economic Research and Policy Management Department of the Ministry represents us on the Financial Literacy Working Group which is working assiduously to address the barriers that have created a financial inclusion gap between men and women. The Ministry is also taking the lead on promoting gender-responsive budgeting,” Mrs Ahmed explained.
As defined by the United Nations Development Programme, the efforts by the government “entails the analysis of the entire budget through a gender lens to identify gender-differential impacts and to translate gender commitments into budgetary commitments,”
By so doing, she said “It will increase accountability and make the budget process more transparent, leading to equitable outcomes for men and women. We have also created a gender desk for each sector department in the Ministry to ensure that gender is mainstreamed in all our projects and interventions. Our Collective Responsibility to Break the Glass Ceiling for All Women,”
She encouraged all women attending this conference as well as other sectors of the economy to consider the promotion of increased opportunities for women in leadership roles in the workplace as a collective task.
” In my position as the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, women represent 50 percent of my personal team. On committee assignments I have also sought to ensure women are well represented and take a lead in driving the discussions that lead to better policy making.
“As an example, in the development of the Finance Acts, we have taken active steps to ensure that the top female tax professionals in Nigeria are included as part of the core team of the Fiscal Policy Reform Committee (FPRC). This has ensured that issues that are of importance to women and children are elevated in the formulation of new tax laws and the review of extant laws,” the Minister added.
