GOVERNMENT BUDGET AND PRIVATE INVESTMENT PROMOTION IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of government budget on private investment promotion in Nigeria. To achieve this, research questions were raised, hypotheses were formulated, and a review of the extant literature was made. In this study, the ex post facto research design was adopted and time series data covering the period of 1999-2023 were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin of 2024. The dependent variable in this study private investment promotion was measured by foreign direct investment and domestic investment while the independent variable, government budget was operationalized as budgeted health expenditure, budgeted education expenditure, and budgeted agricultural expenditure. The data were descriptively analysed with mean, standard deviation, etc and the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) regression technique was used to assess the impact of the independent variables on the dependent variables at 5% level of significance. Findings from the study revealed that government budget has a positive significant effect on private investment promotion in Nigeria. More so, budgeted health expenditure though has a positive impact on domestic private investment in Nigeria, its impact is non-significant. Budgeted education expenditure and budgeted agricultural expenditure have positive and significant impact on domestic private investment in Nigeria. But budgeted health expenditure, budgeted education expenditure, and budgeted agriculture expenditure have a negative significant impact on foreign direct investment in Nigeria. It is therefore recommended among others that government should design a mechanism for an effective government budget on health in Nigeria to increase access to funds by private investors in the health sector, thereby increasing and enhancing domestic investment and foreign direct investment into the sector.