N500b cash for the poor stays in N6.06tr budget.
Lawmakers have retained the N500 billion intervention fund for the poor in this year’s N6,077,680,000,000 budget.
The Muhammadu Buhari administration
plans to dole out N5,000 to the poorest in the land and feed school
pupils, among its populist programmes.
But the National Assembly yesterday passed the 2016 controversial budget with a reduction of over N17 billion.
The lawmakers passed N6,060,677,358,227 as the 2016 budget, slicing off N0,017,002,641,773.
Passing the budget, the House of
Representatives gave a proviso that Section 318 of the constitution must
be strictly adhered to.
Section 318 stipulates that the Appropriation Bill will run for 12 months, starting from the date it is assented to.
While considering the bill for second
reading at a plenary chaired by Speaker Yakubu Dogara, the lawmakers
said the Excess Crude Account is unconstitutional and should no longer
be operational.
The budget oil benchmark is $38. Oil has hit $41, the highest in months.
However, the mood of the lawmakers was difficult to guage when the item for N100b Constituency project came up for approval.
The lawmakers also questioned, through
loud murmurs, when an item N3.43b Bulk Trader, in addition to N10b
Sinking Fund came up for adoption.
Senate Committee on Appropriation
Chairman Mohammed Danjuma Goje, who presented the report of his
committee, noted that in view of the revenue and general economic
challenges confronting the country, “the committee has, in a landmark
decision not witnessed since the advent of the present democratic
dispensation in 1999, reduced the size of the aggregate expenditure and
consequently reduced the total recurrent, deficit and borrowing plan.”
Part of the highlights of the budget as
passed include Aggregate Expenditure N6,060,677,358,227; Statutory
Transfers N351,370,000.000 (retained); Debt Service N1,475,320,000,000
(retained); Recurrent Expenditure reduced from N2,648,600,000,000 to
N2,646,389,236,196; Capital Expenditure also reduced from
N1,845,540,000,000 to N1,587,598,122,031; Fiscal Deficit
N2,204,936,925,711.16 and Deficit/GDP 2.14%.
The same benchmark of $38pb was proposed by the Executive.
The Executive proposals of crude oil
production of 2.2 million barrels per day and an exchange rate of N197
to $1 were also adopted
The committee observed that the late presentation of the budget affected its timely passage.
The committee also said that the 2016
Appropriation Bill, after its presentation to the National Assembly, was
seen to be “fraught with some inconsistencies from ministries,
departments and agencies, given the subsequent reference by them to
different versions of the budget”.
Goje, who said that the inconsistencies
in the fiscal document were also noticed at the level of the
sub-committees, described them as “strange and goes against proper
budgetary procedures and processes with attendant implications”.
The committee chairman told the Senate
that they observed that the available revenue for appropriation was
grossly inadequate to meet the huge demand of MDAs to prosecute needed
programmes for national development across all spheres of the economy.
Goje said: “The 2016 (Appropriation)
Bill seeks to stimulate the economy by the recurrent expenditure as
compared to the capital component at a ratio of 30:70% is still very
high. This takes away from the infrastructure-stimulus funding that the
country so desperately needs for development.”
He noted that the Appropriation Bill contained some omissions, particularly in personnel cost.
Goje added that “though the
Appropriation Committee has filled some of the gaps, there are many
outstanding cases which could raise serious concern in the course of the
year”.
The committee recommended, among others,
that subsequent budgets should be submitted in strict compliance with
the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act to enable the National
Assembly conduct proper engagement and to conclude the budget in good
time.
The committee also said that there
should be proper engagement in future between the Budget Office and MDAs
on the budget contents to avoid what appeared to be a disconnect
between them in the processing of the budget proposals.
Goje specifically referred to a situation where some MDAs disowned their budget before the Appropriation Committee.
Some statutory transfer allocations
include National Judicial Council N70b; Niger Delta Development
Commission N41,050b, Universal Basic Education N77,110b; National
Assembly N115b; Public Complaints Commission N2b, Independent National
Electoral Commission N45b and National Human Rights Commission N1210b.
Debt Service: Domestic debts N1,307,400,000,000 while N54,480,000,000 was allocated for Foreign Debts Service.
Presidential Amnesty Programme stipends
and allowances of 30,000 Niger Delta ex-militants was allocated
N7,875,000,000, Presidential Amnesty Programme operational cost
N1,834,149,261 and N10,290,850739 was voted for Presidential Amnesty
Programme reintegration of transformed ex-militants.
Other allocations: Ministry of
Agriculture N46,175,963,859; Ministry of Defence N130,864,439,542;
Ministry of Education N35,433,487,466; Ministry of Health
N28,650,342,987, Ministry of Information and Culture N6,071,503,956;
Ministry of Interior N61,713,279496; Ministry of Justice N879,736,744;
Ministry of Solid Mineral Development N7,332,623,257; Ministry of Niger
Delta N19,440,328,551; Ministry of Transportation N188,674,679,674;
Ministry of Works, Power and Housing N422,964,928,495.
Senate President Bukola Saraki remarked that there was no bickering over benchmark.
He noted that the budget “reflects
efficient and equitable allocation of resources to reduce the challenges
that we are all aware of”.
“The budget is now a product of bipartisan engagement, commitment and one that is broadly nationalistic”.
“It gives me great joy to commend and
appreciate all the efforts that you have all put in . It is the duty
of the executive to ensure full implementation of this budget as part of
the campaign to bring succuor to our people.
“While implementing, we charge the
executive also to consider the areas of supporting locally produced
products in order to help our economy.
“We have all seen the earlier hiccups in
the beginning of the budget and we hope that by the time we are about
to get the 2017 budget, the agencies and the budget office would improve
their level of interaction and government itself would bring the
budget much earlier to give ample opportunity. It is very important that
we do this.”
“Nigerians have been waiting for us to
pass the budget. I think at this time too, the implementing agencies
should ensure that they get to work quickly in implementing the budget.”
Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu
said: “I am a bit worried about the observation made by Goje as
contained on page five of the report, which says the 2016 Appropriation
Bill contained a number of omissions particularly in the area of
personnel cost.
“Though the Appropriation Committee has
filled some of the gaps, there are many outstanding cases which could
raise serious concern in the course of the year.
“The executive presented what we
considered as proposal and so the ultimate responsibility for this
budget rests on us the members of the National Assembly.
“If there are mistakes on the part of
the executive, it ends at the point they presented the budget. If
anything happens after that and we pass the budget, we cannot blame them
any longer.
“I therefore want to know what these outstanding cases are because it appears that it is in relation to personnel cost.”
Goje said: “This budget exercise was
full of negotiations, going forth and back. When the budget was
presented as attested by many committees, there were shortages
discovered, including personnel cost in various committees, and the
total amount involved was presented to the executive and in the course
of our interaction with the budget office we presented the shortfalls
for personnel and other overhead costs, which we believe was being taken
care of.
“Somehow they did it halfway, so since
they did it halfway, we also did it halfway but for critical
organisations, most of them were satisfied.”
“We still have pockets, few that we
believe will have some problems and the Budget Office confirmed to us
that they may come with something to make it up.
“Because this budget is full of
controversy, we didn’t want to add more controversy. If we add more
controversy, the report wouldn’t have been submitted now and the
National Assembly will be blamed for delaying this budget.
“That is why we did everything possible
to ensure that we beat the deadline instead of continuing back and forth
and Nigerians will not understand; they will say the National Assembly
is playing politics with this budget, meanwhile we are doing everything
possible to ensure that the budget is as implementable as possible.”
Defending the budget work at a news
conference, the joint Appropriation Committee said almost all parts of
the bill presented to the National Assembly were tinkered with, except
President Muhammadu Buhari’s N500b intervention programmes.
Goje said: “We did not tinker with it;
nobody asked any questions; we just approved it because we believe, the
interventions can touch the lives of Nigerians.”
Goje also disclosed that when
calculated, what was passed yesterday was N1.05 trillion as the capial
component of the expenditures of some agencies in the Presidency were
not available to the Committee.
“When the capital component of the
expenditure of all those Commissions are added, then it will amount to
N1.060 trillion,” he added.
Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman, House
Committee on Appropriation said it was the first time since 1999 that
the country has witnessed a reduction in aggregate expenditure.
He said though the budget estimate is
huge, contrary to widely held belief that the National Assembly would
add to it, the reverse was the case as N17b was reduced from the initial
estimate.
“We all know the challenges that accompanied this bill and often times, with overheads being most contentious.
“We engaged the Executive and the Budget
Office on it because we also discovered that several critical items
that were not in the budget. We had to allocate funds to those areas.
“We also have to tilt some allocations
in favour of security, anti corruption drive in order to strike a
balance with the policy thrust of the government”.
The Committee however enjoined Nigerians
to focus less on the padding controversy. “Don’t concentrate on how the
padding issue was resolved but on light at the end of the tunnel.
“This is because we cleaned it up and
we believe that most of these problems won’t occur again in future. For
the fact that this is a transitional government from one political party
to the other, this should not be too strange. We are sure this will not
occur again,”Jibrin said.
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