President Muhammadu Buhari, during his signing into law of the 2022 Budget revealed areas where he said the National Assembly altered the budget presented to it by the executive and increased the figures by N735.85 billion.
According to Buhari: “It is in this regard that I must express my reservations about many of the changes that the National Assembly has made to the 2022 executive budget proposal.
“Some of the worrisome changes are as follows:
Increase in projected FGN Independent Revenue by N400 billion, the justification for which is yet to be provided to the executive;
Reduction in the provision for Sinking Fund to Retire Maturing Bonds by N22 billion without any explanation;
Reduction of the provisions for the Non-Regular Allowances of the Nigerian Police Force and the Nigerian Navy by N15 billion and N5 billion respectively.
This is particularly worrisome because personnel cost provisions are based on agencies’ nominal roll and approved salaries/allowances.
Furthermore, an increase of N21.72 billion in the overhead budgets of some MDAs, while the sum of N1.96 billion was cut from the provision for some MDAs without apparent justification.
Increase in the provision for capital spending (excluding capital share in statutory transfer) by a net amount of N575.63 billion, from N4.89 trillion to N5.47 trillion.
President Buhari also expressed concern in the reductions in provisions for some critical projects, including N12.6 billion in the Ministry of Transport’s budget for the ongoing Rail Modernisation projects; N25.8 billion from Power Sector Reform Programme under the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning; N14.5 billion from several projects of the Ministry of Agriculture, and introducing over 1,500 new projects into the budgets of this Ministry and its agencies.
Furthermore, the president expressed his reservations on the inclusion of new provisions totaling N36.59 billion for National Assembly’s projects in the Service Wide Vote which negates the principles of separation of Power and financial autonomy of the Legislative arm of government.
The changes to the original executive proposal are in the form of new insertions, outright removals, reductions and/or increases in the amounts allocated to projects.
Provisions made for as many as 10,733 projects were reduced while 6,576 new projects were introduced into the budget by the National Assembly.
Reduction in the provisions for many strategic capital projects to introduce ‘Empowerment’ projects.
The cuts in the provisions for several of these projects by the National Assembly may render the projects unimplementable or set back their completion, especially some of this administration’s strategic capital projects.
Most of the projects inserted relate to matters that are basically the responsibilities of state and local governments and do not appear to have been properly conceptualised, designed and costed.
Many more projects have been added to the budgets of some MDAs with no consideration for the institutional capacity to execute the additional projects and/or for the incremental recurrent expenditure that may be required.
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