FG to spend N500bn for social welfare in 2016

The Federal Government has proposed to spend the sum of N500 billion on social welfare intervention programmes for 2016 fiscal year. It, however, prescribed evidence of school enrollment and immunization certificate as the essential requirements to benefit from the social welfare package.

This is contained in the 2016- 2017 and 2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, and Fiscal Strategy Paper, FSP, submitted to the Senate for consideration and approval.

The document which was circulated and read to Senators by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki is expected to be the basis for the 2016 appropriation estimate to be presented to members of the National Assembly.

While a provision of N63.29 billion was made as the Federal Government’s share of the controversial oil subsidy payment for the same fiscal year, no provision was made for subsidizing kerosene.

It revealed that the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, will be funded with the sum of N241.51bn under the headline: Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Excess Crude Account (ECA) & SURE-P.

The document further explained that the Federal Government will collaborate with state governments to institute well-structured social welfare intervention programmes such as: School feeding programme initiative, conditional cash transfer to the most vulnerable and post-National Youth Service Corps grant.

Stating that, “N500 billion has been provisioned in the 2016 budget as social investments for these programmes,” it pointed out that, “these interventions will start as a pilot scheme and work towards securing the support donor agencies and our development partners in order to minimize potential risks.”

Under special intervention including cash transfer, home grown school feeding programme and micro credit loans (SMEs, market women etc) which is also covered by the social intervention programme, the government provided the sum of N300 billion for 2016, N339.05 for 2017 and N338.93 for 2018.

The document puts the arrears of 2015 Subsidy on Domestic consumption as N150 billion, even as it included the sum of N108 billion as the cost of fuel subsidy to cover October to December 2015 in the recently passed 2015 Supplementary Budget of N521 billion.