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Communication Technology ministry’s capital projects poorly funded – Senate

By BusinessNews Staff on February 27, 2014

The Senate on Tuesday lamented that most of the capital projects in the Ministry of Communication Technology, for which money was appropriated in the 2013 budget, were poorly funded.

The Senate Committee on Communication, which raised the alarm, noted that its findings revealed that only a few projects captured in the budget “were completed, while some were left with just little attention.”

The Chairman of the committee, Senator Gilbert Nnaji, stated this at the 2014 budget defence of the ministry.

He regretted that the government had abandoned the funding of the National Rural Telephony Project even though funds were appropriated for it.

Nnaji said, “The committee observes that while few projects had been fully completed, some were almost completed; others were sparsely funded, while some were not funded at all.

“A subhead under the 2013 budget namely: ‘construction and provision of infrastructure’, under which you find the National Telephony Project, was not funded at all. We believe that the take off of this project is long overdue.”

He said information available to the committee showed that “as of the last quarter of 2013, out of a capital expenditure budget of N2.5bn for the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, only N1.0bn was released, leaving an outstanding sum of N1.5bn.”

Nnaji noted that the summary of the total allocations to the ministry’s capital expenditure as of the fourth quarter was just 41.51 per cent.

He wondered whether all the budgetary items that were either poorly funded or not funded at all were actually unimportant to the ministry.

Nnaji further lamented the continued decrease in the ministry’s allocation and noted that only N14.6bn was appropriated for it in the 2014 budget as against N15.6bn last year, and N19.6bn in the 2012 budget.

“We further observed that the total capital expenditure proposal for 2014 (N4bn) is about 23 per cent reduction from the N5.2bn approved in 2013,” he added.

Nnaji said his committee, “having taken time to study the 2013 capital performance appraisal forwarded to it, has consequently resolved to pay a scheduled oversight visit to various locations of the ministry’s capital projects in the country.”

He decried what he called the reluctance by the ministry to kick-start the national Rural Telephony Project, which he noted, was a way of relieving pressure on the GSM networks.

The Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, said out of the 27 capital projects earmarked for execution in the 2013 budget, 12 were successfully completed, while 15 were rolled over to the 2014 fiscal year.

She said her ministry had developed a national broadband plan for the country and gave the assurance that the government was working very hard to ensure that the objectives of the plan were achieved.

[Punch]

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