The Federal Government under
President Muhammadu Buhari has put the performance rate of the 2018 budget at
75 per cent.
Director-general of the Budget
Office, Mr. Ben Akabueze disclosed this during an interactive session with
editors in Lagos, yesterday.
He said the federal government
did not spend up to the projected amount on capital expenditure.
According to him, “As for the
extent of implementation of the 2018 budget, usually budget is expressed in
terms of how much is your projected expenditure.
“We now have the final numbers
for the last quarter and we reckon that total performance is about 75 per cent.
That means we didn’t spend about N2.2 trillion we projected to spend. Sadly,
the bulk of that shortfall comes from capital revenue.”
Earlier, the Minister of Budget
and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, in a presentation on the 2019
Appropriation Bill, said the amount provided for recurrent expenditure in this
year’s budget proposal rose to N4.72 trillion, from N3.52 trillion in 2018,
because of the intended minimum wage hike.
Udoma explained that the
technical committee on minimum wage constituted by the president last week was
mandated to look for ways of raising additional revenue to ensure that payment
of the higher minimum wage did not affect resources available for capital
expenditure.
He added, “We all want a larger
budget. Indeed, Nigeria deserves a much bigger budget. Our budget is too small
for our needs. However, we have to find the money. But there is no point having
a large budget that you can’t fund. This is a budget that I believe we can
fund.
“I believe that as we get more
revenue, we would continue to increase the size of our budget.”
The minister said the $60 per
barrel crude oil benchmark adopted for the 2019 Appropriation Bill was
appropriate, saying analysts generally believe the recent decline in crude
price is for the short-term.
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