Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
The director general of the Budget Office of the Federation, Dr. Bright Okogu, has disclosed that the federal government’s wage bill has gulped N1.5 trillion for the year, just as the 2011 budget attained implementation of between 65 and 67 percent.
Okogu, who made the disclosure in Abuja during an interview on the sidelines of the Third Economic Policy and Fiscal Strategy Seminar, organised by the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA), said the recurrent expenditure of the federal government remains its biggest challenge and accounted for the rising wage bill, which he said, gulped about N1.5 trillion this year, up from about N870 billion in 2009.
He predicted that this might rise to about N1.7 trillion in 2012.
Giving some insight into the wage bill, Okogu said last year’s 53 percent pay increase for university workers, among others, led to the astronomical rise in the federal government’s payroll. He described the rising bill as not very good for economic development.
On the 2011 budget, Okogu revealed that budget implementation stood at between 65 and 67 percent based on available funds, adding that considering the cocktail of political activities this year, and the fact that many ministers assumed office late, this was not bad.
“The rate of performance of the 2011 budget, based on the money that has been released is about 65-67 percent performance.
“You know this year was not like most other years because of the elections, the dissolution of cabinet and reconstitution of another one, and the time the new ministers required to learn. We feel that given the particular reality what has been achieved so far is not bad.
“You recall in the last few years we have always extended the capital budget implementation time to March 31st of the following year. If you take 2010-2011, for example, we were able to spend N935 billion, that is, a 15 month period.
“The year before which also experienced a 15-month cycle (2009-2010), we were also able to spend N919 billion,” he said.
Lamenting that revenue generation agencies had not been doing enough to boost the federal government’s revenue drive, he disclosed that the higher the revenue such agencies generated, the higher their spending and the less they remitted to the government.
He cited the case of an unnamed agency, which generated about N82 billion, spent 80 percent of it and remitted 20 percent of the net revenue to the government.
“If you look at the big revenue generating agencies, a lot of them spend much more than what they should spend and this is not right because if you draw a correlation, you would find out that as revenue goes up, expenditure also goes up,” the DG said.
Okogu stated that in order to reverse this trend, steps had been taken in the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSS) for next year’s budget that will mandate revenue agencies to pay not less than 25 percent of their gross revenues to the government.
He expressed optimism that the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was resolved to reverse the negative trend associated with the administration of public funds, promising that a marked departure would be evident next year.
In his address at the seminar themed, “Sustaining Economic Growth through Inclusive Social Policy,” the acting director general of CSEA, Dr. Ebere Uneze, noted the need to take measures that would ensure sustainable growth through social policy and economic reform. He said this had become imperative at a time when the global economy was faced with prospects of further economic contraction.
“It therefore means that government at all levels should ensure fiscal discipline and prudently manage resources for better results. More so, the domestic economy must become more productive and one way this can happen is to formulate and implement job creating programmes—the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN) programme of the federal government is a step in the right direction,” Uneze said.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com