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Budget 2011 unimplementable – Aganga

By on April 7, 2011

ABUJA — The executive arm of the Federal Government is to re-engage the National Assembly on the bloated N4.9 trillion 2011 budget which the Minister of Finance, Mr. Segun Aganga, has described as un-implementable.

Receiving the report of the Technical Committee on Review of Budgetary Allocations to ministries and agencies, in Abuja, yesterday, Aganga said he was optimistic that the planned dialogue between the executive and the legislature would produce a budget that the executive could implement in the interest of all Nigerians.

His words: “The constitution says that the executive should submit the budget to the National Assembly; they will review the budget, consult widely. They will present and approve the budget; it comes back to the executive. We will look at it at the executive level, and if we are comfortable with it, the President signs. If we are uncomfortable with it, we resume the dialogue.

“Where are we? We have made out comments already. At this time, our legislators are in the field (campaigning) and that has delayed the process to some extent.

“I am sure as l have said that we will engage. In the past, we have had a very good relationship with all the relevant committee members. I have no reason to doubt that we will sit together and work something out and come out with the right budget that is implement able for the country,” he said in response to a question on the 2011 budget.

Aganga added that the Federal Government had adopted measures to address fiscal discipline which he said had enhanced efficiency and quality of spending.

His words: “In that line,  we will recall that the deficit spending was reduced from 6.2 per cent in 2010 to 3.26 per cent in 2011. We also noticed that we actually reduced the overhead by over 30 per cent, both for the National Assembly and the executive.

“We also recalled that the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System have saved us about N12 billion. This has been extended to other MDAs.”

Anya calls for cut in govt size

Earlier, the Chairman of the Expenditure Review Committee, Prof. Anya O. Anya, called for a cut in the size of government which he said was too large and that the nation did not have enough resources to support, if funds were to be available for development purposes.

“Do we need the size of Ministries and so on? The answer is No. Do we have the resources to meet the demand of the national Assembly? The answer is No. We do not have the resources to support the level and size of government,” said.
He said that the reviewed showed that the nation was spending 80 per cent of annual budget on recurrent, a situation, he insisted, was unhealthy for any nation.

According to him, the government would strengthen its budget  monitoring and evaluated processes, as well as, procurement process “As a result of that, we are in a process of appointing a captured program manager that will work some of the high spending MDAs. And that will go a long way in reducing the number of uncompleted projects across the country and to make sure that the money is properly spend in the right direction”, Mr. Aganga said.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Expenditure Review Committee, Prof. Anya O. Anya, called for a cut in the size of government which he said was too large and that the nation did not have enough resources to support, if funds were to be available for development purposes.

“Do we need the size of Ministries and so on? The answer is No. Do we have the resources to meet the demand of the national Assembly? The answer is No. We do not have the resources to support the level and size of government,” said.

He said that the reviewed showed that the nation was spending 80 per cent of annual budget on recurrent, a situation, he insisted, was unhealthy for any nation.

He also disapproved a bogus size of the legislature where he said Nigeria compared very negatively with other nations of the world.

The  two chambers of the National Assembly had on the 16th of last month approved N4.971 trillion as the total expenditure for 2011 with N2.467 trillion voted for recurrent expenditure.

The sum of N1.562 trillion was set aside for capital expenditure, N496.6 billion for statutory transfers while N445.096 billion goes for debt servicing.

The figure budget passed by the legislature was N751 billion (17 per cent) more than President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposed spending plan, while drastically increasing its own allocation from N111.23 billion to N232 billion.
source : Vanquard