The Minister of Finance, Mrs
Zainab Ahmed, says the Federal Government is working towards ensuring it pushes
its releases for capital projects from the 2018 budget to N1.1 trillion by the
end of December.
The minister said this while
answering questions at the public presentation of the 2019 budget highlights on
Thursday in Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari, while
presenting the 2019 Budget estimates to a joint session of the National
Assembly on Wednesday, said that in spite of the delay in the passage of the
2018 Budget, N820.57 billion had been released for capital projects as at Dec.
14.
He unveiled a federal budget of
N8.83 trillion for the 2019 fiscal year, N300 billion lower than the N9.1
billion being implemented for the current fiscal year.
According to Buhari, N4.04
trillion or 50.31 per cent is earmarked for recurrent expenditure and N2.03
trillion representing 22.98 per cent earmarked for capital projects.
Other estimates are N492.36
billion for statutory transfers, N2.14 trillion for debt servicing and
provision of N120 billion as sinking fund.
Ahmed said that the N820 billion
that was released was for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) capital.
“The N820 billion is 43 per cent
of MDAs capital, we are working to push these releases to N1.1 trillion by the
end of Dec. and that will include the statutory transfers service and the rest
of the MDAs whose capital we are currently processing.”
On the issue of fuel subsidies,
she said that the National Assembly did not announce fuel subsidies of N800
billion for the fuel marketers, rather, it was the fuel marketers that were
demanding or asking that the Federal Government should be paying them that.
“The NASS approved N326 billion
and that approval has been conveyed to us and we are currently in the process
of issuing promissory notes to these fuel marketers.
“Last week, we released the first
batch of N177 billion to the fuel marketers and we are doing some
reconciliation processes to release the second batch to them perhaps before the
year closes out or in any case as early as possible in the new year.”
Ahmed said that the Ministry of
Finance was focused on revenue generation to be able to mobilise more domestic
revenue so that it could better fund the nation’s budget which clearly had a
deficit.
“You can see from the performance
that there is a gap between what is planned for in the budget and what is
actually generated.
“We are doing all we can and very
soon we will be releasing new revenue initiatives which will include a new set
of taxes on excise duties.
“We will also be working with the
Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on
new and enhanced measures for enforcement and compliance.”
She added that the new measures
may involve going to the NASS to amend some laws that have been identified to
have some gaps and loopholes.
Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, Minister
for Budget and National Planning, said that of the total appropriation of N9.12
trillion, N4.59 trillion had been spent by Sept. 30, against the expenditure
target of N6.84 trillion.
This, he said, represents 67 per
cent performance, adding that spending on capital was prioritised in favour of
critical ongoing infrastructure projects in the power, road, rail and
agriculture sectors.
He added that implementation of
the 2018 capital budget would continue into 2019 until the 2019 budget is
passed into law.
Mr Ita Enang, Senior Special
Assistant (SSA) to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate),
clarified the issue of constituency projects allocation and funds.
He said that the money for
constituency projects and the zonal intervention does not go to the individual
lawmakers but to the different ministries.
“A lot of people still think that
the money for constituency projects is given to the lawmakers but it is not
given to them, it is just allocation and it is not cash.
“The executive arm of government
does not allocate the constituency project funds to the sectors, rather it makes
a bullet allocation to the National Assembly.
“It is for the National Assembly
members individually and severally to choose and decide what is priority in
their own area,” he said.
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