The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh has said that the current Zero Budget Allocation had crippled implementation of the Ministry’s capital projects.
The minister also said N21.6 billion has been released to the ministry representing 64 per cent of its total appropriation and N882 million have been utilised, representing four per cent of the amount released.
According to him, “funds for capital projects and programmes have not been released to all the agencies supervised by the ministry. The Zero Budget Allocation had crippled implementation of their capital projects and programmes approved in the 2016 Appropriation Act.
“In the first quarter, 2016 Development General Warrant, the sum of N21, 629,752,470.00 representing 64 per cent of the total Appropriation for the main ministry was released. This was in the month of July, 2016.
“The late budgetary release slowed down our budget performance significantly.”