In fulfilment of its campaign promises to bring positive change into the economy, the All Progressives Congress-led Federal government has reserved the sum of N500 billion for social welfare intervention programmes for 2016 fiscal year while making provision of N63.29 billion as the Federal Government share of the controversial oil subsidy payment for the same fiscal year.
No provision was however made for kerosene subsidy for the year under reference.
Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) will be funded with the sum of N241.51billion under the headline Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Excess Crude Account (ECA) & SURE-P.
But essential requirements to benefit from the social welfare package are evidence of school enrolment and immunization certificate.
This is contained in the 2016- 2017 and 2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (PSP) submitted to the Senate for consideration and approval.
The document read and circulated to Senators by Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki is expected to be the basis for the 2016 appropriation estimate for presentation to the National Assembly.
According to the document, 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.
It said that “N500 billion has been provisioned in the 2016 budget as social investments for these programmes.”
The government said, “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 put the arrears of 2015 Subsidy on Domestic consumption as N150 billion.
The government had also 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.
In 2015, the SURE-P gulped N0.25 billion for running cost and the sum of N20.78 billion as capital expenditure.
The budget for the Presidential Amnesty Programme was slashed from N47.39 billion in 2015 to N20 billion in 2016.
Provisions were not made for the programme for 2017 and 2018 fiscal years.
Provision was made for Frontier Exploration Services to the sum of N39.88 billion.
The budget of the National Assembly was put at N115 billion for 2016 down from N120 billion for 2015.
The government put the sum of N50 billion under the heading of “recoveries of other misappropriated funds.”
Still on recoveries (refunds/recoveries from Strategic Alliance contracts) N137.90 billion while NNPC/CBN N162.43 billion.
The total under the subhead of recoveries of misappropriated funds is therefore N350.33 billion.
On social development, the government said that job creation and social inclusion are key to the administration’s development programme as a means to reducing the rates of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
It said that a phased social welfare programme will be created to cater for a larger population of the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians upon the evidence of children’s enrolment in school and evidence of immunization.
The government said that it will, in the near-to-medium-term, continue to prune the size of the federal government and its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) to more efficient levels without compromising efficiency and effectiveness.
It noted that over the medium-term, however, “government will revisit the need to rationalize the agencies of government and strategically implement relevant provisions.”
On the introduction of Treasury Single Account (TSA) the government said that the multiplicity of government accounts had made it difficult to have an accurate picture of the public financial resources.
“Government has therefore enforced the full implementation of the TSA system. Already, this is facilitating a more effective aggregate management and control of government cash balances, which, hitherto, had been maintained in several bank(s) accounts. Government has similarly enforced the full implementation of the integrated payroll and personnel information system (IPPIS) in all MDAs, which should result in some saving,” the document said.
The government also said that the mounting number of claims for increases in salaries and allowances including pensions and other benefits should be curtailed as part of the efforts at rebalancing the structure of government spending.
The government said that the 2016 budget will be structured to provide a stimulus to reflect the economy by investment in key infrastructure and the development of an inclusive economic recovery.
It said that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, which at 12%, is one of the lowest in the world, gives room for the fiscal expansion.
It added however that government will ensure that additional borrowing is kept within prudent limits and channeled towards infrastructure.
To that extent, government said that a budget size of N6.04 trillion is being proposed and federal government’s revenue is projected at N3.82 trillion implying a projected deficit of N2.22 trillion.
It said that the ratio of capital to recurrent expenditure is envisaged to move from the current 16/84 to about 30/70 in 2016.
It said that fiscal deficit is targeted at not more than 2.16% of GDP (about N2.22 trillion in normal terms.)