The federal government has revealed its inability to account for the level of implementation of the 2016 budget.
It will be recalled that the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun had said early this year during the defence of the budget that the inability of the government to fully implement the 2016 budget of N6.03 trillion will depend on the ability of the federal government to meet its revenue targets.
In her words when she spoke to the House of Representatives, “I cannot promise that every single agency would receive every money appropriated for them (because) the budget is an estimate and funds would be released based on revenue.”
So far, it’s difficult to ascertain reasons behind the failed budget or an unimplemented budget.
When asked, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning officials refused to comment on how much had been released for the 2016 fiscal year, requesting that the question be directed to the Ministry of Finance.
The minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma speaking through his spokesperson, Akpadem James said, ‘’It is the ministry of Finance that can give details on the release on budget. We don’t do the releasing. Once we are done with the budgeting process, what we do is to issue mandate to the Ministry of Finance, then they do the releases.’’
When asked whether it’s not the ministry’s responsibility to monitor releases, he said,
we monitor the budget not the releases, the monitoring aspect for instance, if the ministry of works is requesting for more money, we will now ask them what about the money that was given to you people last month and they will say they bought this and that, what we do is to go and inspect and ensure what they did what they said. Once we go and monitor and are satisfied with what has been done, we now issue a mandate to the Ministry of Finance to release the next money to Works. It is the Finance that will know how much has been released.’’
The Ministry of Finance, but the Director Information of the ministry, Salisu Na’inna Dambatta refused to comment on the matter but sent a press release of N1.2tri capital budget released through email. When requested he gave figures of 2016 budget implementation, he never responded.
However, in September, 2016, the Federal government said about N3.58 trillion out of the N6.08 trillion budgeted for 2016 had been implemented.
President Buhari had said that the implementation of the 2016 Budget was hampered by the low oil prices in the first quarter of 2016, and disruptions in crude oil production which led to significant shortfalls in projected revenue. He said this also negatively affected revenue collection by the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigerian Customs Service.
“As at September 30, 2016, aggregate revenue inflow was N2.17 trillion or 25 per cent less than prorated projections. Similarly, N3.58 trillion had been spent by the same date on both recurrent and capital expenditure. This is equivalent to 79 per cent of the prorated full year expenditure estimate of N4.54 trillion as at the end of Sept. 2016,” he said.
Recall that the Nigerian government had given a breakdown of N1.2trn released for capital projects in 2016, yet they can’t seem to account for the level of implementation of the N6.08 budget.