Oil price fall: Okonjo-Iweala insists Nigeria won’t print more notes

Nigeria won't resort to printing money or imprudent borrowing as it adjusts to lower prices of oil, the mainstay of its economy, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said. "This is not the first time this country has gone through lower oil prices and it will not be the last," she said at a conference in the capital, Abuja.
"We should avoid the kind of fear that will paralyze us or make us do the wrong things out of fear and alarm." Nigeria, which is facing general elections in February, lowered its proposed budgeted oil price last week to $65 per barrel, the second cut in less than a month, signalling government revenue is set to plunge.
Any borrowing will be done "judiciously," Okonjo-Iweala said. Increased tax revenue and an expanding private sector would help the   country offset the impact of falling oil prices, she said. Global oil prices have plunged more than a third since June, prompting monetary policy makers to devalue the naira for the first time in three years, and threatening to erode public finances in a country that relies on crude sales for 70 percent of government income.