I went to my local Sephora today and I picked up the new make-up by Mario's, what is it? Soft Sculpt Transforming Items that launched. I was very intrigued by these. It seemed like an innovative product. I watched multiple of his demos and I still kind of quite don't know what to do with this product so that's what we're going to test out today. When I did go into store, I did take a picture of all of the colors. The lighting in Sephora is terrible so everything looks a lot darker than it is, but I thought in general the items at Sephora did look darker than I thought they would be. The lightest shade, which was light, I thought looked like would be my shade, but I'm also light medium and then make-up by Mario and his videos also said that these are going to look darker than they appear on the skin, so really long story long. I picked up shades light and light medium in both the skin perfecter and the skin enhancer. So let's get to it. We're going to start off with the skin enhancers first. This is the product that I'm the most curious about because I saw him use it on one person as almost like a foundation and then I saw him use it on another person as almost more so over a bronzer and the way he described it, it was like not a foundation. I don't know, but this is the box that the skin enhancer is going to come in. It just matches the rest of his makeup line, made in Italy and has a 12 month shelf life. I know the words are really small, but if you do need to take a look at the ingredients, here you go. So these are going to be $30 each. There are six shades with this product. And how they describe it online is that it has light coverage and a radiant finish. It's a cream formula, fragrance free, vegan and cruelty free for those of you who need to know that, but it says this is a three in one tinted complexion balm. So I'm instantly thinking of the Denessa Myerks that just came out that warms and nourishes with sheer coverage to even out the appearance of the skin tone. And then he also talks about, you know, how it like warms it, but how can you even it? I don't know. So I didn't put any concealer or anything on. So we're just going to see how this acts on the skin. See what we can get out of it. So I did pick up, like I said, two shades, light and light medium. They're going to come in this packaging right here. It has a frosted cover and here is the back on the back. It says this is an all over warming a complexion tint. Let's do it. Let me show you the shades. Turning the light down so you can see all of what I'm working with. So this is the shade light and I wasn't sure when I bought this, like how exactly this was supposed to be used. So I thought I'd get it because it looked a little dark. Okay. Let's touch it. Oh yeah. It does feel very, very creamy. You can see it doesn't feel powdery at all, but it definitely melts as your finger gets in there. This looks like my skin tone. Okay. We'll see. But it does have like a bronzeness to it. Oh, and do you see that? It has a sheen. Let's look at light medium. This is the shade I was originally going to get if I had to just order online. Feels really nice. This looks like more of a bronze shade for me. From what I'm picking up, this seems to be like you can use this however you want. Maybe you could get multiple shades of this, but you see that kind of sheen that it gives off. So I'm just going to try a brush. Makeup by Mario, of course, recommends his brush to apply this, but I never buy the brushes. This is a Sigma, can't read it with the glitter multi-tasker brush. I don't know. Let's try it. I'm just going to go for it. So this shade on me, this is light. Not that I want to use it as a foundation, but I'm going to use it to even out like my cheeks and wherever I want the glow and a little bit of coverage. It didn't really add much coverage, but it added a really pretty gloss to the skin. So I feel like while this doesn't give hardly light coverage, this could be pretty just to head out the door like this, you know. Let's see. Okay, that's very pretty. Let me hop into light medium now. I'm going to use a sponge and I'm going to focus this because this is a deeper color. So this one actually warms up my skin tone and it actually leaves a shade behind. Okay, this is definitely probably the correct shade if you have the intention of using this as more of like a bronze if you have my skin tone. So had I just ended up with light medium, I would have been happy. Probably didn't need the light shade, but I freaked out in the store because they looked dark. Even though Mario warned us that they look darker than they are, ooh, that's pretty. So I don't think I'd use this as foundation because the undertones, they aren't meant to cover or anything. They're more, I see what he means by like bronzy shades. Oh, but that's pretty. And even though it's not a foundation, I feel like I can wear less makeup because I don't feel like I need a foundation where I applied the product. So what I'm going to do is put on a little bit of concealer on the T zone area where I need a little bit of extra coverage. And I'm going to use these to kind of compliment the rest of the face. So I wanted more of a natural concealer to go with this look. So I chose the Armani Luminous Silk Concealer. I'm just going to use this for the under eyes because the makeup by Mario is definitely too like shiny to put there, you know, I'm going to use my sponge and blend it out. So I think this product is going to be really great either as you can use it just as like a cream bronzer or to get glowiness to the face on top of full coverage, if you would like, or for a more natural kind of clean girl aesthetic makeup look, do what I'm doing is even though I only have concealer on some areas of my face, how naturally pretty and glowy does this look? Oh, this is great, great, great for everyday makeup. OK, I'm going to go back into the light shade, not the light medium. And I'm going to use this necessarily to highlight. But since it is a bit brighter, I'm going to bring it in a little closer to the rest of my concealer. So I'm not keeping it on the outer parts where I want the shadow to be, which is the light medium, but I'm pretty much putting it everywhere else. That's not my under eyes. And it gives the skin such a pretty glow. I'm not mad about picking up like probably didn't need to. Now I know, but I feel like I have a little bit more freedom to do what I want with the light to get that glow that it gives. And then I can use the light medium to kind of bronze the skin and add the depth. That's gorgeous. OK, I think this is a pretty innovative product. I think it's really nice. I like it. I don't have a lot of products like this, so I like this. OK, cool. So now let's get into the next product. Again, something that might take a little bit of research to understand. These are the self-sculpt transforming skin perfecters. So these are going to be a little bit more expensive. They're thirty four dollars each and there are five shades in this one. And he said that this is going to match whatever shade you are in the skin. Enhancer is where you're going to be in the skin perfecter. This particular product is made in Japan has a 12 month shelf life. So how they describe this one is also like coverage, radiant finish, vegan, frequency free, cruelty free. And this is a three in one. So again, that multipurpose powder to perfect, illuminate and set for a radiant glow within airbrush effect on the skin. And again, I probably should have just gotten light medium. Even in store, I was like, I probably don't need the light, but I couldn't help myself. So I did pick up the light, which is right here. And you can see this essentially is a bronzer, a highlight and a translucent setting powder put into one. This one is a little bit easier for me to understand and explain to you guys. And then here's the light medium. Let me put them side by side for you to see the difference in the color. The light medium right here, the bronzer is a lot more warm. And I liked the way that the light looked because I liked how it looked a little bit cooler, so we'll do half and half for both. So for the swatches, I'm just going to blend them all together. Basically what Mario did and what I am going to use this as, let me show you. So this is the light and the light medium. There is a difference. And I think you'll definitely be able to see more of a difference if you were to go into, just say the bronzers, let me show you the bronzers. Here's the light bronzer. And then here's the light medium. Yeah. So if you went into each individual product, you'll be able to see more so of the difference, but essentially you use all three powders mixed together all over the face. And then where you want more glow, setting or bronze, you use a smaller brush individually. Like for me, I'm going to use a translucent powder under my eyes. I'm going to use, if I want a little extra bronze after I set the face, I'll go into the bronzer portion. So that's what we're going to play with today. And clean off my brush. Now, if you are digging in to specific parts of the powders, there's very, very little room. You're going to have to use very little brushes. So I'm going to use the translucent powder first on my under eye. And inevitably you're going to get some of that glow, which I don't really like because as I'm trying to set my under eye, you can see the shimmer got in there and this does not look good. That kind of made it look really dry. And I tried to just get in here and I think it has a glow anyways. So that was not a good move on my part. Probably want to set with this separate powder. But I wish there was like a bigger portion of the setting powder. That was a little bit more matte shimmer under the eyes. That's my mistake. We'll play around with the other side. OK, let's blend all of them together. This is the light, right? And I'm going to use this to just set the whole face. Well, on this side, we'll see if there's a difference between the light and the medium. It's really, really shimmery, you guys. I don't know if I like that as in all over powder because you can see it emphasizing the pores, maybe on the outskirts of the face. But on the inner portion, the highlight in the center here, I think it's just a bit too strong. I think it should have been as small as the translucent powder, like almost switch these because if you have perfect skin, I'm sure you'll like it. But for us girls that have pores and texture and acne, it's not the most flattering, but we'll move forward. Let me find some smaller brushes. OK, so I'm going to go into just the bronzer portion. I'm really having to use my brushes differently. This is a highlight brush for me, but I am using a highlight brush to get more bronze in. And that did add that extra definition. So I set the face and I wanted more definitions. So I went in with a small brush and this powder allowed for that. I'm going to mix these two now. Same brush. Get myself a little bit more of a glow. I mean, that's pretty. I have a very pretty glow to my face. It's just a bit much in the center of my face. So I'm going to try it with the light medium now. I don't know if I should try and set my under eyes. I just don't think this should set the under eyes. I'm going to do it. This one is like a little turned to the side. So we're on light medium. I'm just going to get the top. It's shimmery, right? Yeah, this one has a bit more of a pink color. Oh, that looks so bad. But the setting powder here is more pink in the light medium. Yeah, this is more of like a highlight, not really a setting powder. He said it was a translucent setting powder. That does not look like a translucent set of powder. That straight up was like a highlight for me. So keep this away from setting the under eyes or the T zone if you're porous in that area like me. Just fine. You live, you learn. Let's get it all in on the brush.  And this is going to be a little bit more intense on my skin tone. But that actually is really pretty the way I did it. So as long as you keep it outside of this area right here, just in general, neither of these products look good right in here. But on the outskirts of the face looking really pretty. I need to put some powder on there. OK, so now I'm going to go into the bronzer portion. This one is actually like bronze. So for me, honestly, it might be pretty if we mix both of these. Yeah, I like that. I could probably even go in with a bigger brush now. Oh, the bronze on this is really pretty. You can tell a complete difference in how much more warm the light medium is.  I think this one gives me a little bit more of a bronze. So the light will work pretty well on very light skin tones. It's just a different look, but it's very, very pretty. But I need to set the center of my face. OK, I do like this product. I did use it horribly wrong, though, if you couldn't already tell. If you have model perfect skin, maybe you could get away with setting it your face with this. But if you don't have perfect skin, I would not set the center of the face with the perfecter powders. Just kind of use it to give an all over glow and then to go in and bronze and add extra shimmer where you want. And then same thing with these skin enhancers. You want to keep it away from the center of the face. But if you work from the outside, it looks really good because I have very minimal complexion product on you. So I just use concealer in the center of the face. And then I let the enhancers do the rest of the work on the outskirts. And you literally can't even tell that I don't have any foundation on right now. So it actually is really great for keeping the layering of products minimum. Mario likes that monochromatic-ish kind of look. So I'm going to go in with the light, medium enhancer. Going to start this off with the bronze in the crease. If I'm not looking at my pores, I do feel like I have like very pretty, glowy model skin. And this is really pretty in the crease. Going into the light, medium perfecter into the bronze shade. So you can get an eye look out of this. It's not going to be wham-bam or anything, but it's going to keep it pretty natural. That's some of my lower lash line. Then let's see what the gold in the light looks like on my lid. OK, so you definitely can use this as eyeshadow. It will be subtle. It's not going to be like a pigmented eyeshadow by any means.  I'm using the white shade. OK, that actually looks really good. Look at my skin. I'm like not looking at this, but the rest of my skin looks really good. It would be best if I redid my makeup, probably knowing what I know now. But I'm just going to try and go through with a little bit of matte powder in this area right here and finish the rest of my makeup. And I will be back to give you my final thoughts on these. All right, so here is the final makeup look. One thing I want to talk about. I did use the makeup by Mario Creamy Peach. It's a powder blush just on the apples of the cheeks. And you can see all of the glow from the products underneath popping through. I think it's very beautiful, even though this is pretty much a matte blush. There is a little bit of sheen to it. You can definitely see the sheen from these items that I talked about today. Popping through and I think it's really pretty. My skin looks really nice. Let's start off with the Skin Enhancer. So this truly is what I would describe as a tinted balm. It's not a fancy word for foundation like some other brands do. This is not a foundation. I do recommend maybe applying a foundation first because these tinted balms will go over a full coverage foundation. If you want the colors that these give you or you can do what I did today, put concealer in the center of the face and then use the tinted balms just on the outsides and it will look very even and pretty as well. It won't look like oh, she put coverage in the center of her face. And then that was it. I think it looks really complete throughout. So I think it's a really nice product used either way for my skin tone. I do recommend just going ahead and picking up light medium though. I'm happy that I did pick up lights because I think it gives a little bit more versatility of what I can do with this product because I think this is still very pretty just to give a glow to the skin. So even if I don't want to use it to like sculpt or bronze per se, it's pretty to add that warmth and glow to the outskirts of the face. It will be a great way to transform a fully matte foundation to add a little bit of glow to the face. So I really like these. I think these are a neat product. I think they're very unique. I don't have a product quite like this and the performance of them was really, really nice. The skin perfectors, the little triple powders. Now that I know how to use them, I like them more. Don't set the center of your face with these. You're going to have to go in with a different powder unless you have perfect skin, but a lot of us have texture and pores. I did leave what I put down, but I did use a powder foundation over the center of my face and it made it look a lot better. Though I think I'd look a lot better if I hadn't have made that first mistake. But I think these do make really pretty kind of all over powders as long as you keep them away from the porous areas. It does give a really pretty glowy look to the skin, not glittery, which I think is really nice as well. And because of the three different shades, you still have versatility of where you can put it on the face. Like I did notice when I did just dip into the bronzer, it really did make my skin bronze. When I did just dip into the center highlight shade, that did give me a golden glow. When I did just dip into the lightest shade, I would use it as a highlight. Honestly, he describes it as a translucent setting powder. I think it's too glowy for that. But anyways, I still think it is a very, very nice product. And I think the glow that it gives on the skin is really pretty. I stepped out onto my deck to see the makeup in the sun and how the glow looked and it looked really nice. If you have oily skin, be a little careful because this is a really glowy product. But if you have dry skin or you just like a really glowy look, I think you will enjoy these products. And I hope this video helped you kind of figure out how to use it. But overall, the quality on these are very nice. There might be slight learning curves here or there to figure out how to best use the product for you. But once you figure it out, I think that these are really nice products and they're different. And that's what I'm really happy about. And I think these are really great additions to makeup by Mario's line. Again, you can see this line was curated by a professional makeup artist. One of the best out there in the industry. And I'm really happy I'm going to continue playing with these. These are really great summer products. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video and found it helpful. Thank you so much for being subscribed to my channel and like this video. And I will catch you guys in the next one. Bye, guys. Have a good one.


This is a new project that I've been developing with my colleagues at the Centre for Digital Humanities Research, Bernardo Nunes and Teri Nomeko-Fuller are the other co-creators, co-authors of this site. And the motivation was partly motivated by the shutdown by COVID-19 and its restrictions on a lot of traditional research methodologies in the humanities and social sciences, but it's also sort of something that we've been thinking about doing for a while, and in a way the lockdown was a push for us to get organised. Yeah, so digital humanities is still largely a self-taught field, and listening to these other talks today, I'm realising that we're not really alone in that, that the skill levels are sort of patchy across researchers in a lot of disciplines. But I think humanities researchers often don't really know where to start, and they might not have had much background in being taught to use digital methodologies, and we all use digital resources a lot, increasingly for our research, but the sort of formal training in unusual types of software or Python is something that is really still not happening a lot in humanities, and so it can be really difficult to get started if you're not someone who has a sort of bravery to just jump in and break something. So some of the barriers for researchers in HASS for engaging with digital methods might be that there's no digitised data, you might be still working with the hard copy archive, praying that they digitise it at some point. There can be software expenses, there's a lot of incredible software, but it's often very expensive, and if your university doesn't have a subscription or you are not attached to a university, it can be really hard to get access. But then there's sort of bigger and harder to define barriers. So things like, when you're getting started with digital methods, you often don't know what is easy and what is hard. So you don't know if making a digital map, which is something I do is going to take you a day, a week, a month, three years, and the answer is it can be all of the above. It's also often very hard. People might share something that they've done for their specific research question, but sometimes translating that method to your research data can be really difficult when you're starting out. And also that the perfect data and method don't exist. And so often a lot of existing tutorials are produced by, say, software companies for using their software work with kind of perfect data. And when you go in with your imperfect data and it doesn't work and it breaks and you don't know if you've done something wrong, if it's not the right software. And also, I think there's still a bit of an issue with sort of gatekeepers, people who are kind of like to make things seem a bit harder than they are sometimes and can actually end up putting off novices in jumping in the deep end. And then apart from that, I think, you know, those people are rare, although sometimes they're a little dominant in some areas, but it's also just the conversations are hard. So if you're used to talking about software in a highly technical way or you're not used to doing that at all, just getting started on that conversation is really difficult. Yeah. And so the CDHR, the Centre for Digital Humanities Research is a bit different in that we're just a research centre, we're not a service centre. So we've got one developed, one very overworked developer. And the rest of us are researchers, we're mostly early career researchers. And so we have a focus on also working on our own projects. But we still get a lot of the questions and inquiries from colleagues and students about how to get started with with digital methods. And because we can't roll out a training program, we often end up writing lots of emails, having a lot of coffee with people. And we sort of, this is where the idea came from. We thought, well, you know, I've had five coffees in the last six months to tell people how to use a GIS program for mapping, why don't we turn that into a lesson that can be used by lots of people. And so trying to pitch these lessons at a lot of different levels. And so people who are novices, people who might have some expertise in one area, but they're thinking of sort of shifting it into another area. And trying to really start at that level of where we often start with students or colleagues, where it's not, it's not a kind of intermediate level question, which is often where a lot of the online tutorials seem to start, they assume you've got a data set, they assume you know how to open the terminal on your Mac and type, you know, type of command in. But really a lot of people in in HAS are still starting at a level where they're asking, you know, I've heard you can scrape Twitter, but what is scraping? And how do I do it? And what is R? And so it's sort of get trying to get people started that that we will begin a level. And also to work out how to translate. So people might have seen a project, one, I know in digital mapping that people often talk about in Australia is the Lyndall Ryan's massacre maps at the University of Newcastle.  And so, you know, working out how to translate that to your own project. Yeah, and I guess, and then especially at the moment, a lot of humanities researchers, social science researchers are facing restrictions. And we're probably, you know, even as you know, congratulations, Melvin, people start to open up a bit. We're still looking at no travel, no overseas travel restrictions on face to face workshops with people, concerns about going into different communities and actually doing face to face engagement. And so I think a lot of these new and emerging methodologies are going to be really important going into the future. Yeah, and so the, I want to briefly talk about who we are, because I think it sort of shapes the type of resource that we've built. So we're really small center, that's sort of almost all of us and half the people in those photos are HDR students. So we've got only four academic staff. But we come from a whole range of backgrounds. So I'm as time said in the introduction, I'm a kind of traditionally trained humanities scholar. I worked in archives, there was no training in software or digital methods, everything I learned, I did myself. But we've also got a colleague from computer science, Bernardo is a computer scientist. And so he's coming from that side, but he's very interested in the application of methods like crowdsourcing and link data to humanities topics. Howard Morphy, who's the man in the middle with the great mop of white hair is an anthropologist. And so he represents a sort of profile of an academic who in a way he doesn't do a lot of the digital methods himself, but he sees the potential for them. And he links up with other researchers who can do the hard work of coding up a website or setting up a digital map. And our HDR students are kind of a new kind of hybrid type of humanities student who are often learning on learning as they do their PhDs, how to implement these digital methods. And coming up with really creative ways to use them such as sort of building a crowdsourced archives and things like this or applying link data to Chinese literature. And it's also comes out of our teaching. So we tend to, ANU is a university where we're all meant to do research led teaching, which is sometimes easier, sometimes harder. But we really try and treat a lot of our students as researchers in training. And so we set them to work on what could easily be real world research projects and often do develop into that. And so a lot of what they've been doing over the last couple of years is to work with Glam collections, so libraries, archives, museums in Canberra. And these students are really diverse. There's some of them are computer science students, some of them are fine arts students, some of them are from languages. And so some of them have a lot of experience using digital methodologies. And some of them have absolutely none at all. And so there's no shared base level for skills and knowledge. And so we wanted to also create a resource that these students could use. So if we have a student who says, you know, I'd like to build, you know, a website as part of my project this semester, but I've never done anything more sophisticated than browse the web. There's somewhere for them to start. But equally, if we get a student who already has a background in computer science and is used to working in a way that is a bit more advanced, that we can also sort of point them in the direction of a sort of different set of skills to acquire over the semester. But one of the things we're really keen on is that we don't give, we don't kind of give step by step instructions. And this is partly because there's no one sort of one size fits all, we'd be developing them for every single student. But also because we're trying to encourage the students to understand the process of learning new software. And so it's not a matter of just learning this piece of software, which you can then keep using for the next 20 years, it's that you need to learn a soft piece of software or a method for a specific project. And that's the reality of research or industry work a lot of time. And so, and so our website, and I'll give you a preview in a second of some of the types of things we've been publishing on it, is very much based on giving people kind of introductions and overviews, two things rather than a sort of step by step, you know, use this command, use this command, use this one, because there's a lot of other, I think, really great resources that already do a lot of that online. So yeah, this is the website I've posted. The URL is on there. I've also put it in the shared doc if people want to have a look at it. And so it's free, it's open, we've made it accessible to anyone who wants to use it. And it's designed to be research support and also teaching material support. And so that we're sort of hoping people will use it for teaching as well as research. And that people can dip into it, whether they're teaching a whole program in digital humanities, or if it's say a course where an instructor just wants to introduce a couple of weeks or a single week of learning some digital methodologies relevant to that particular topic. So the lessons are written by experts, I guess, call ourselves experts, but they're also written by people who are kind of newly learning an area. And so we've got some from our recent graduates from our masters. We've got some by our HDR students. And this is partly because we like to include our students in the projects that we do, but also because often people who are just learning a method are in a much better place to point out the things that an expert has forgotten a difficult barrier. So I'm sure a lot of people have the experience of going through a tutorial and getting to a point where it seems as though they've jumped 10 steps and you think, I don't know how to get there. And so yeah, getting some of sort of not not quite beginners, but but people who are currently in the process of learning a new a new method to write those up as well. So what? All right, for time. So I might look at the website in a second. I'll just run through the next one or two slides. So one thing that's really important to us is that these contributions appear reviewed and we're going to have DIYs for each post. And this is partly to kind of help with longevity. They'll be put in our ANU research repository. But it's also in a sort of to have a kind of critical evaluation so that we, you know, all of these overviews will have a little bit of personal bias, I guess, you know, in terms of the way that we use in for our own research, we want them to be relevant to the border community, but we also want this kind of expertise in methods and software skills to be recognized as research expertise. And so not just kind of help that you take away and you use and you apply to your own work, but something that you acknowledge that someone else has spent, you know, time and effort developing this kind of methodology, expertise in this methodology. And so hopefully this will also help us to make it a quality resource in an ongoing way. And so this I will just so can you see everyone can see the website there. And so I just wanted to flick through really quickly. This is my lesson on digital mapping to give you a sense of these types of overviews that we're publishing. And so we've got a video which briefly describes the method for people who like sort of video introductions, which is what a lot of our students are asking for a lot of the time. And then we've kind of got kind of questions like why would you use this? You know, who is this useful for? Because there's nothing worse than sort of putting hours and hours of time into a method and realizing it's gotten a relevance to be all particular research question or your data set. We've got some jargon busting. And so, you know, these things that can trip people up as they get stuck into a new area where they're not too sure what people are talking about. Prerequisite. So what do you need? It's like don't go and buy an expensive piece of software and realize that you don't have the right data set.  So like what are the things that you should try first, just to see if this works with your particular research material. And so the idea is to give people a place to get started, to see if this method is worth investing more of time in, to see if a method is worth investing in buying software. Our approach, we're quite inspired by the Programming Historian, which is a publication which offers really detailed lessons for historians and other people in the humanities and social sciences to use different digital methods. And they've got a sort of open source software only policy. And we're not following that in quite the same way because we think there's some areas where the license software will save you time and effort. But you want to make an informed decision about whether it's worth buying it. And then we've got some examples of projects to look at. And a sort of, you know, very short starting point in terms of references, as well as software and resources. And they're very varied. And so as an example with the mapping one, I've got a mixture of something like QGIS, which is a full suite software. It's a very advanced program. But also saying to people, you know, if you just want to get started by dropping some pins on a Google Maps, that is also a way to get started on digital methods. So you don't need to feel as though you have to jump in the deep end with the most sophisticated piece of software or the hardest method. It's a lot of researchers use, you know, off the shelf tools and simple tools to get started. And that that's a really good place to start. And so, yeah, I'll wrap up there. And yeah, happy to answer any questions. Fabulous. Thanks so much, Katrina. It was also


The 2022 budget of economic growth and sustainability has a projected capital expenditure of $5.35 trillion, a non-debt recurring spending of $6.8 trillion, and debt servicing projected to cost $3.61 trillion. With crude oil averaging $67 a barrel this year, the oil price benchmark for 2022 has been set at $57 per barrel with an oil production estimate of 1.88 million barrels per day. The budget proposal is based on an exchange rate of $410.15 to the dollar and projected GDP growth of 4.2% while the inflation rate is 13%. But there is a proposed budget deficit of $6.26 trillion. We plan to finance the deficit mainly by new borrowings, totaling $5.01 trillion, $90.7 billion for privatisation proceeds. President Buhari sought to alleviate fears over Niger's growing debt. Some have expressed concern over our resort to borrow and to finance our fiscal gaps. They are right to be concerned. However, we believe that the debt level of the federal government is still within sustainable limits. Borrowing at specific strategic projects and can be verified publicly. But a sustainability consultant would like the government to look inwards in funding the budget deficit. Currently MDAs as well as international oil companies and other very important organisations across the country, they refuse to remit certain funds within their disposal to the federal government. And we know that this fund runs into trillion of Naira. So I think if the president can actually focus on getting these MDAs and IOCs and other relevant organisations to do the remittance they need to do in respect to their taxes and other obligations to the federal government, maybe we'll just be able to generate just enough money to be able to shove the issue of borrowing to the ground. With the early presentation of the 2022 Appropriation Bail and All Things Benecore, Nigeria could well be on track for a budget cycle of 12 calendar months from January to December. Merci beaucoup for Plus TV Africa. Just a quick report there by Merci, a book of Plus TV Africa. And now we are going to be speaking with Femi Egbeshala, the president, association of small business owners of Nigeria. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Three points. Mr Egbeshala, can you hear us? Yes, good morning and thanks for having me. Great to have you on the breakfast this morning. And I'm going to start with asking, you know, you know, basic thoughts on the president's budget yesterday, 16.39 trillion Naira. There have been people who have screamed, you know, at those figures, seeing where we're coming from. In the year 2000, our budget wasn't, you know, more up to 700 billion Naira. We've moved from there to, you know, asking for about 16.39 trillion Naira in 2022. So let me, first of all, get your thoughts from yesterday's address to the Joint Administration of National Assembly. Well, the increase in the budget to 16.39 trillion is an indication that the government is going to have more money to bomb different ministries, agencies and Naira status. And that will also mean more development for the country, as it may be. And that's what we need for now. The inflation rate is so high that we need so much fund to be able to tackle inflation and bring back the economy to what it used to be. But the challenge there now is how do we fund this? Do we have that kind of fund? And we actually generate the expected revenue at the winter post. But must we continue to borrow to support our budgets? That's the concern. Naturally, one would have expected that the budget should be based on the national revenue, rather than going ahead to fund it from borrowed money overseas. And it means that the government also need to begin to look inward and see how they can work more on local national revenue generation, such that our budget will be based on what we can have and not we can borrow from. Well, it also shows that there's a problem with the system and the economy, because if you are spending more than what you can generate, it means there are leakages somewhere. It means they are setting challenges somewhere. It means that there is need for us to increase our productivity. That being said, the government needs to be more innovative in generating revenue, such that our budget will be dependent on what we can raise, and this budget will be prudently spent on the proposals. For example, in Nigeria today, we have a lot of policy pronouncements, but the implementation has always been a challenge. The question is, this year's Budget 2021, how has the implementation rate been, what are the reviews of this year's budget to show the challenges we have had, what areas we have deviated from the proposals that were submitted last year, and how can we correct it? These are the things we need to do next. Okay, so I'm going to go next to one of the things that you mentioned, and that is budget implementation. We don't have enough of that conversation. We also have an auditor general who doesn't really do justice with helping to explain to Nigerians, and of course the presidency to explain to Nigerians how well we've used the funds that were budgeted and those that were borrowed and whatnot. It's always easy when the president puts out those speeches saying, you can see that roads were built, you can see trains were built, this and that, but there's no proper detail as to how proper the budget was implemented. So let's get your thoughts on that one. Does that just make us seem to be moving blindly and continue borrowing? It seems more like that. I think the government of the day needs to be more proactive about implementation and reviews. We need to have a stronger economic team, and we also need to have perhaps another team that monitors the implementation of the projects so that such that we are in tandem with what we are expected to do with taxpayer money. Given that we can also have challenges at times like this particular year last year, we know that the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic actually disrupted the projects to a very large extent, but be that as it may, we should at all times continue to focus on the implementation of what we have. And this time, I think most funds should go into sustaining the economy and growing the economy instead of servicing the recurrence. And that has always been another challenge with our budgets over time. We need to focus on growing the industries in the country such that they can be more productive and we can get more revenue from them. We need not to focus more on oil as we have always done. Like in this budget also, the focus is more on oil. We are expecting most of the revenue to come from the oil sector, which to me is not in tandem with the realities of today's world. We need to focus more on growing the SMEs. We need to focus more on growing scale acquisitions so that we can have more opportunities in the country. We need to focus more on the health sector so that most of our funds will not be going overseas in the name of going for treatment overseas and that may have become stricken to the more. We need to focus more on developing our raw materials. We have a lot of raw materials, raw minerals in the country that are unexplored and can give us a lot of revenues if government actually focus more than they are doing at the moment on this. We also need to focus on education. We cannot really get much without actually paying more attention on education. Education has always been one of the best growth of any economy. If we are fully budgeting enough into the education sector, you will discover that there are going to be more innovation and we will be innovative ideas. We will be able to create a better economy for ourselves that will not longer be dependent on getting fund from overseas and we will be able to also reduce our imports. The import into this country has been challenging and has been threatening in our era and as long as it continues to do that, inflation will continue to rise and government will always need more money to fight inflation by increasing their projects year by year and that's not the way to go. So for us to be able to tackle inflation effectively and efficiently, we need to make sure that Nigerians bring to understand that local meat products and services is the way to go. We must encourage the production and perpetuate of locally made products and services and this has to start with government itself. But we need to begin to see how they can be done in locally made products and services and be less dependent on the imported ones. We have quite a number of prohibited product lists by CBN but we need to go beyond that. One thing is to have some products being prohibited and another thing is to enforce the prohibition. Today we have a foreign rise all around us which is part of the prohibited list and many other products and even food items that are prohibited but are still in our market. What are they doing there? Who is enforcing these policies and what are they to be in a place where it should be and not the other way around whereby some of us will begin to disrupt the efficiency and effectiveness of the policy proposal and the implementation of the policy at the end of the day. Yeah. Ms. Aibashalad, these things, I'm sure that we could have had the same conversation in 2015 or in 2016 or 2017 because we've had similar, you know, these discussions and these plans and I'm sure experts have continued to say these things over the years. How much we need to focus on development, focus on industries, focus on science and technology, education, healthcare, basic infrastructure. Some of all these things that really would help the Nigerian economy grow but every year we see that there's an increment in the budget proposal. That means that these things aren't working and so we need to continue to source for more money. So I'm going to come back to that and get your views on how well we've done in that regard but I want you to share your views concerning those who are complaining that we are borrowing too much. We currently have a modern six trillion-hour deficit. We very likely will be borrowing about five trillion-hour plus. Do you have similar worries with former President Dullesh Agam and other experts who have said that this is really just leading us to a very, very terrible situation if we continue borrowing? Yes. I have heard Nigeria actually bothered about borrowing because it is going to have a direct negative influence on all of us at the end of the day. No individual, no business, no country who wants to borrow to finance is like expedition. That is not right and nobody would want to agree with that. I for one continue to wonder why we should keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing without working on how to increase our revenue. Granted, we have been reasonable for once but it should not be a custom that you have to go again and again and again. If you continue to spend more than what you can generate it means there is going to be a problem and eventually there will be a collapse and the government needs to understand that they need to learn from the other economies. We have bigger economies that are having more population than Nigeria and there are several other challenges but they are not borrowing. They have left to leave according to their means and also become innovative in generating revenue and that is the way to go. It is a lot of concern. We wonder what will happen next year again because the borrowing of this year will always be more than that of the other year and it is not good for the economic health. It means that the government also needs to check their economic team. I think it is time for us to begin to look at how to encourage the government to put more expats in the economy to see how steer the direction where the economy is going. We cannot continue to live on borrowing. It is like a blood. When blood is leaking from your system and it is not blocked on time, death is imminent and that is exactly what we foresee with this economy. It is an uncomfortable situation. I don't think there is a lack of expats in the country. There are persons like you and lots of people who understand the economy to perfection but unfortunately the presence in government don't seem to agree with your narrative or the narrative of some of these experts. I know you are not speaking for the government but why do you think that they understand it different because missile finance has made statements yesterday saying that we will continue to borrow to keep the country growing. Where do you think their own narrative comes from? Well, I think that there is a lot of difference between sitting on the tables and coming in policy and being on the streets. Many of the economists that are on the streets that are romancing with the public day by day and not unfortunately in the government, economic committees or tea. That is why some of us are clamoring that state holders of the road to fall be part of the economic team of the government. The so-called technocrats alone or government officials alone cannot sit in the office and think that all is well. All is not well. They don't really understand the happenings in the streets this time. It is very very difficult for an avid man to leave and even have three square meals a day and that is the challenge and that is why we have increased the number of advisers everywhere but it should not be named everywhere. It is about crimes and advisers because everybody must survive and when they cannot get good means of survival they look the other way around and why do they find it difficult to survive because the economy is so harsh inflationary rate is the highest at any point in time in our history and that is not good for us. If I were the president I would look into my economic team and perhaps make some critical changes to be able to effect the realities of the economies of today. We need not continue to borrow. We must be able to look in world. If organizations, companies in and around Nigeria are still weathering the storm, COVID-19 or not and they are still making profits declaring profits, why will a country be declaring deficits? That's not right and I do not agree that we must continue to borrow and borrow with the various potentials that this country has and the human capital too that we have that can harness these potentials to bring in even more than the double of the revenue that is being protected at this point. Great time to remind Nigerians that elections have consequences and it might take 80 years for every person to feel the effect of those consequences. I like that. I like that. I now want us to talk about the value of the Naira and what this continues borrowing, the effect that it will have. The CBN governor has continued to do all he can to help the exchange rate somehow, someway become more reasonable but these plans are not working very well and so it's borrowing as briefly as you can. Is borrowing also one of the reasons why we will continue to see the Naira's value depreciate? Of course, it also contributes directly to the precision of the Naira because when you continue to borrow to sustain your expenditure you will continue to live big and when you continue to live big it is the detriment of the Naira because every other person will believe there is money to spend and they don't now look at the money that is available, money that is ready to share from state to state, from local government to local government and everybody seems to be comfortable why the reality is different and that means that it is time now for government to see how they can strengthen the Naira not just by relying on the policies of CBN which has not been working as it should be over time the physical realities of the streets we need to look at how to strengthen our economy how to strengthen the small and medium enterprise sector how to strengthen the industries how to strengthen our duties to be productive such that we will be able to have more jobs created we will have more enterprise coming up and existing enterprises will be able to grow faster and bigger than they used to be will become less dependent on imports and this will eventually bring back our Naira to its lost glory if we reduce our import to the barest minimum naturally and ordinarily the dollar will begin to fall and Naira will continue to rise but if we continue to rely on policies on the table I'm sorry to say we will continue to have a long way to go but as these policies are taking with us for the past 3-4-5 years Naira has continued to enjoy a free fall and that means that something is wrong with those policies if we are not actually getting the desired result and that means we need to do something different to get a different result at this time we cannot continue to sit down and look like some people will say the budget is proposed on a of 4.10 Naira to a dollar but the reality is that the market the open market is not even 4.10 Naira meaning that we are not getting it wrong from the beginning and the only way to get it right is to be less dependent on imports and more so that we can strengthen our Naira the more Is the current oil price any form of comfort because we have an oil price benchmark of 57 but of course the oil price is currently around 80 and maybe even climbing Well yes the benchmark for this proposal is 57 dollars per barrel but the real market price is small and above that I love that the government has been very conservative the proposal at this time but some of us have lost confidence in the sales of crude oil to sustain our budgets some of us could believe again that we must continue to rely on oil is sold for economic and wrong we have gone past that the world is even looking at finding alternative means as source of energy rather than oil meaning that at the point in time there will be less and less demand for oil where would that place continue to put a primary reliance on oil and how much a barrel of oil is sold and it shows that we are still not looking in world enough so we believe that the the first price of 57 dollars per barrel should be realistic all things being equal because it is conservative enough but at the same time we need to look more beyond just the selling crude oil to maintain our economy for example government is looking at getting more oil waste because of how it is actually drying up but is that the way to go to continue to pump our money to discover and explore oil waste I think that's not the way to go the command is to focus on the non oil products the domestic products and see how they can encourage these domestic products to grow rather than more for us more attention on our sales of crude oil and its exploration Femi Egbershala you are president association of small business owners of Nigeria you are going to bring you in with that you earlier spoke about how we haven't done well enough in investing in numerous other sectors how important that we need to focus on other sectors like the agriculture sector industries science and technology small businesses SMEs across the country education healthcare and all of that so I want you to share your views on how you think that better investment in small businesses will be able to help Nigerian and also look at the way that the current government has also positioned itself people have said that they have continued to stifle businesses earlier this morning we spoke about how electricity prices have also been hiked secretly without Nigerians knowing so do you think that the current government even if they continue to say that they always have these great speeches that they make but do you think that they've done well enough with regards opening up the space for small businesses to thrive in Nigeria well the end result should be a determinants that should answer that question and the end result is is the SME space growing and we have been more enterprise the enterprises that are existing are growing are they transforming from micro to small to medium from medium to large enterprise the answer is no and why is this because the economic realities is so hard and not conducive for growth and what makes it so hard because a lot of infrastructure deficits is in the country and it becomes very very difficult for startups or small medium enterprises to grow we have a situation where instead of recording growth we are recording deaths many companies now many small businesses at a point of death are already dead what's the reason for this governments will give a support of perhaps 10 cents and create a situation that will take about 30 percent out of them granted government has done a lot of intervention in recent times quite a number of intervention but the question is how many benefited from this intervention according to this report we have about 47 million entrepreneurs in the country at the moment and I'm sure that is far more than that the realities of today show that we have more than even 50, 60 million entrepreneurs this intervention how many of these entrepreneurs benefited from it can it even get up to 1, 2 million entrepreneurs if it gets to 1 million what's the percentage of 1 million compared to 47 million that means a lot still needs to be done there's a lot of gap that needs to be covered and this will field if we really want entrepreneurs small-medium businesses to grow in this country but virtually all the sectors are hailing look at the agricultural sector we have a lot of food wasting away while we continue to import products that are made from exported food here while I want raw material that will be wasted away government needs to break that link government needs to encourage and be cultured but they still need to do more to integrate access road from the rural areas to the cities of the town such that these farm produce can move efficiently to the cities where to be bought and consumed government needs to also support the real farmers you will discover that many of these incentives are going to political farmers and not the real farmers and that's why the real farmers are still doing it the local good way that they are working government needs to have been able to lift them from that the good method of farming to make a nice farming that is the order of today that will increase productivity while we continue to buy beans that we can plant here as much as $100,000 up a bag that's silly and it means that something is wrong somewhere why would we plant our rice here harvest it and before we can sell it we have to rebuy it put it back with a third lane in Thailand it means something is wrong something is wrong government has done a little but they need to do more and the only way they can actually do more is to engage stakeholders as I said earlier time they cannot sit in the office and know where the truth which is on the streets they need to involve people who are actually stakeholders who knows the nature of what is happening to the economy and to the business and bring them abroad to also bring up the suggestions that are there to be part of the policy that government will come up with and also supports them in the implementation of these policies that's the only way we can get it right the education sector is another bad sector that we can talk about but our school time look at the Calvary public primary schools secondary schools you will discover that those students coming out of there must have been geniuses to be able to come out with good breaks look at our graduates what is the quality of education they've been able to receive and many of them are unemployable because the quality of education is becoming low and falling every day we will continue to talk on and on and on but for me the permanent one because I belong to the business sector is for government this time to pay more attention on developing the SME space why do we need to do this because the jobs are no longer there these jobs are no longer there for our graduates and our Nigerian youth the way we can have jobs now is to grow the enterprise space so that those entrepreneurs can involve young people and other youth can also embrace entrepreneurship and come to employ others government actually have no job creating jobs which is the duty of the entrepreneur to create jobs and they can only create jobs if the environment is enabling well you know an enabling environment is it cannot be overemphasized how important it is and that includes also the challenges that we've had with security the challenges we've also had with electricity and basically these little new laws here and there that stifle businesses that's why you also see a lot of young people moving on to social media to be the medium of trade because they can't afford to do business the regular way Miss Agbashala quickly also because we're going to wrap up in a bit on your views on revenue over time and how important it is that we should somehow some way be able to improve on Nigeria's revenue we are going to be looking for 5 trillion naira to borrow we currently cannot find 6 trillion naira to complete our budget it means that Nigeria is not making enough money do you think that the minister of finance and the Nigerian government currently understands the need for us to improve on the revenue as a country in order to stop borrowing well to like I did say results are actually generated from what you can see not just on paper work the realities of we can see everyone of us can see shows that they are not cutting it really right and then I wonder if they realize that but if they don't realize this I'm proud that maybe one of the reasons we have seen where we are today we need to change our ways of doing things so that we can get different results we cannot just continue this way the economy is collapsing every day but we have many ways to raise revenue many people are not in the tax net in fact those people paying tax nets but how do you bring somebody in the tax net who has not been able to eat 3 square meals a day so for you to be able to actually bring people to the tax net government must also show that they are responsible people must see the citizens must see that government is actually working to improve their welfare and their well-being when that is not done it will be difficult to bring them to the tax net imagine the price of diesel has gone up electricity has gone up so many other prices has gone up dollar is rising it means that the products and services will also have a higher price tag and when they have a higher price tag we are going to consume these things it still goes down to the issue of the citizens the citizens are the consumers do they have that purchasing power to buy these products again even if they must buy and talk because they are necessities they have to reduce their buying because their purchasing power has reduced when do you have an economy like that it is difficult for government to actually enforce tax on its citizens but that's the way to go every state client gets their money primarily from tax and other innovative ideas so government should continue to think of how to improve on infrastructure on our health system on youth development on industrializing the country so that's such that they will have more people to tax and more revenue will come from taxation another area that remains untapped today is this issue of relying, processing and adding value to our products from agriculture to raw materials to look at the main products we need to add value to them we have countries team today Keter and Kasaba that has always been exported either by crude or other way around and they bring brought here in the name of process tax and the rest and we are still buying it if we continue to do that we have nowhere to go Nigerians too need to change their mindsets but as much as government has their own challenges we also need to change their mindsets we cannot continue to export our job opportunities to export our future to other countries and the detriment of our youth of our coming generation we need to change their mindsets and products and services so that we can also grow our economy if the government does not get it right we are the one that suffers in the most not those government officials so we also need to begin to see how we are safe and good to the economy how we are safe from the little money we are getting can see a certain form of access to government to improve the economy how we are safe can use that power that we have to force to change the bad government to a good government not because we are giving some stipend for that reason who are going to be the highest bidder that should not be the case this time we need to be looking in more and see how we can better the amount of access by ourselves Nigeria is for us and we are the only one that can make it better if a bad government is there it is only good to be there for a period of 4 or maximum of 8 years our destiny is in our hands we need to work on improving our laws it starts from our own community and we see how we can get our services and improve our community we need to wait endlessly for government to come and do everything for us if we improve our community the economic situation of our community will also improve we will be able to do more enterprise and we have money to do other things and even pay tax and support our young ones in Nigeria such that they will not embrace crime that is the way to do so it is an all inclusive thing if we must get it right absolutely and final question about debt forgiveness as he mentioned a few weeks ago while he continues to borrow I did update that right I'm asking can the president continue to you know mention debt forgiveness while he continues to borrow there are two opposite things there are two opposite things if let's bring it down to a common man's understanding if you borrow money from me you are telling me to forgive you and cancel your debts I am coming back to borrow the money it means that you are not getting it right you will forgive somebody who is repentant and who is ready to change his way of life he is proud of doing things so if you are begging for forgiveness and you are seeing borrowing it means you are not changing your way of doing things and our forgiveness will also encourage you to even borrow the money so naturally even borrowing the money is not the way to go the way to go is if we must go for forgiveness go for debt cancellation we need to also stop borrowing that will show to the forgiver that actually this country this government has such a situation that we are doing things and I ready now to work on getting things done the right way and that's what we need to do at this time we must be self-dependent we must be self-dependent as a sovereign state individual states of the country we must be self-dependent as a local government we must be self-dependent as even individuals that's the way to go and government is at the forefront they need to work by example so that we also can follow their example in making all ourselves self-dependent government should please and please and please work on raising the idea of borrowing to support our budgets our existence and sovereignty alright I truly enjoyed this conversation thank you very much for joining us and spending time with us on the breakfast this morning we wish you a very beautiful weekend ahead thank you so much too so much too for the opportunity it's a privilege stay with us we'll take a short break when we come back we are moving to the southeast we'll talk about the possibility and the idea of a state of emergency in Anambra state as we move closer to the elections on the 6th of November stay with us here on the breakfast


Monkeypox is a highly contagious virus that has been reported in over 75 countries worldwide. It poses a significant risk to global health due to its rapid spread and lack of effective treatment options. In order to prevent further spread of the virus, African nations must take immediate action to strengthen their healthcare systems and implement strategies to protect against future outbreaks. This includes developing vaccinations, improving surveillance and diagnostic capabilities, and increasing access to existing vaccines. Additionally, governments must work together to ensure that all citizens have access to adequate information about the virus and how to protect themselves. This article was authored by Emery Manurambona, Shuibu Saejimusa, Deborah Olawayza and Shomu Yua, and others.