The Senate Committee on Finance,
on Monday queried the Federal Ministry of Finance for high budgetary releases
to itself and some of its parastatals.
NAN reports that members of the
committee raised the question when officials of the ministry appeared before
them to defend their 2019 budget proposals.
The committee noted that amid
complaints of paucity of funds by other government institutions, the ministry
of Finance was making high budget for itself.
According to its budget
performance report for 2018, the ministry has so far recorded 76 per cent overall
performance in terms of fund released in the outgoing fiscal year.
A breakdown of the figures,
presented by the Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, indicates that
personnel cost has got cash backing of 89 per cent.
She said that overhead cost got
62 per cent and capital allocation got 81 per cent.
The Office of the Accountant
General of the Federation, which is under the ministry, has also enjoyed high
releases in the outgoing fiscal year.
Its report as presented by the
Accountant General of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Idris, released N4.386
billion as at March, representing 84 per cent of the N5.222 billion
appropriated to it.
This did not go down well with
the Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Sen. John Enoh, and other members of
the committee.
The committee sought to know why
the ministry released more money to itself while other MDAs were complaining of
poor released.
The lawmakers also drew attention
to “poor utilisation” of the funds released to the ministry and parastatals in the
year under review.
For instance, the senators noted
that whereas N667 million was released to the ministry for capital projects,
only N209 million or 31 per cent had been utilised.
A similar situation played out in
the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) which got N192 million
for capital projects, but had spent only N11 million or six per cent.
Responding, the minister gave the
total performance of the Federal Government’s 2018 budget.
According to her, personnel
budget recorded an average of 100 per cent due to “payment of salaries and
pensions as and when due”.
“For overhead, out of 12 months
we were only able to release eight months with the exception of some critical
agencies like the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the Unity Schools.
“We prioritised their releases so
they had more than eight months, because of payment of corps members’
allowances in case of the NYSC, and feeding of prisoners for the prison
service,” she said.
The minister added that some
military agencies “performing critical functions that must not stop” also had
more than eight months.
Blaming the partial releases on
poor revenue generation, she said the average revenue performance at the close
of 2018 was 55 per cent.
“Because of that, we were not
able to fund the budget as we will have loved to, and therefore impossible to
say some agencies’ budgets will get 100 per cent cash backing,”she added.
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