47% of State House 2016 budget released – Permsec

Only 47 percent of the capital allocation of the State House 2016 budget has so far been released, the permanent secretary, Mr Jalal Arabi, has said.

The permanent secretary said this yesterday when the House of Representatives Committee on Special Duties visited the State House.

He said: “All allocations for recurrent expenditure have been received up to December 2016. The State House capital budget has always been situated in five cost centres as against seven under the recurrent with a total appropriation of N11,140,852,010. However, releases were only made to three cost centres.

“N5,196,581,458.64 was released to date amounting to 47 percent of the amount appropriated, leaving a balance of N5,745,905,910.36 and representing 52.5%. Of the released amount, N4,839,238,955.97 (93.1%) has so far been expended on the projects for which the funds were tied and released. We’re still expecting additional releases before the end of March, especially on hospital equipment to enable us conclude some of the procurement as per the budget.”

Arabi also told the committee that the 2017 budget proposal had become less ambitious than the 2016 appropriation as personnel, overhead and capital costs were minimally reviewed upwards.

The chairman of the committee, Nasir Daura said they were on a factfinding mission to determine the level of implementation of the State House 2016 budget.