Budget: FG rolls 60% capital projects to 2018

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udo Udoma said the Federal Government will roll 60 percent of capital projects in this year’s budget to 2018 fiscal calendar.

Udoma disclosed this when he appeared before the joint Senate committees on Appropriation and Finance alongside the minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun, minister of state for budget and national planning, Zainab Ahmed and the Director General of Budget Office, Ben Akabueze.

He said, “In other to restore our January to December calendar, we have decided to roll over 50 to 60 percent of the capital projects. The MDAs have been told this. The revenues are better than last year but not sufficient to fund the budget. We need to borrow and we have been borrowing. We cannot spend N2.1trillion in five months.”

The appearance of the top government officials was sequel to last week’s senate resolution of the Senate on the poor releases of the capital component of this year’s budget.

In her submission, Adeosun said cumulative releases on current expenditure stood at N1.5trillion.

“Statutory Transfers;N128.8billion ;Funds for Pensions N37.8billion; Overheads ;N92.4billion, Service Wild; 223.6billion,Capital Expenditure; N340.9billion and we successfully raised a N100billion to be released this week.

“At the end of this week we would have released about N440.9billion on capital budget for 2017. There was no stoppage in terms of capital releases and projects simply continue. The administration is focusing on completing prioritized projects that were critical to the administration,” she said.

Akabueze for his part said the Federal Government was able to realise N91 percent (N2.3tr) of the revenue projection for the first half of this year. He said the non approval of the borrowing plan by the National Assembly was hindering government from securing foreign loans to address deficit in the budget.

Senators however expressed reservations over the move to roll over more than half of capital projects in the 2017 budget. Speaking, chairman of the senate committee on finance, Senator John Enoh (PDP, Cross River) said the move to align the budget would negatively affect the country economy.

He advised that the alignment be gradual, saying the country can lose an entire budget if the alignment was hastily done.

Udoma said the alignment was being done “Based on the prompting of the Senate, we have been working. It is only at the transition period that we will have challenges but with discipline we can achieve it.”

Chairman of the Senate committee on appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje (APC, Gombe) said in doing the alignment, the executive should not sacrifice more than half of the budget.