The three national budgets that the nation is presently operating concurrently have capital components, and the Senate on Wednesday asked the federal government to step up efforts to fund them.
When Wale Edun, the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and the Minister of Finance, and Oluwatoyin Madein, the Accountant-General of the Federation, addressed the panel regarding the performance of the budgets, Senator Solomon Adeola, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, assigned the duty. Adeola bemoaned the inadequate funding of the budgets’ capital components and pushed Edun to make improvements.
Adeola said, “It is the capital component of the budgets that will showcase this government largely in terms of performances.
“The capital components tend to showcase various projects that will be executed by this government and people can say the government is doing this, it’s doing that.
“That is why we are emphasising the performance of the 2024 capital component of the project.”
Adeola added that “the N1.84 billion achieved so far out of a N9 trillion capital expenditure component is nothing to write home about.
“I would want you to please look towards this direction. And I want you to do more engagement with the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government.”
Since the majority of MDAs were unaware of the present arrangement involving capital project funding, Adeola advised the Minister to interact with them more.
The head of the Senate panel also alluded to the red chamber’s intentions to convene a public hearing on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, to which the finance minister and other interested parties in the oil and gas industry will be invited. Adeola did, however, thank the Minister for securing full money for the supplemental budgets until 2023.
He said, “We did the supplementary budget, which we have achieved 100% release, which is highly commendable.
“It will not be out of place for you to have a periodic report on the implementation level of these agencies so that at least you can be guided on why transiting to the new method of payment as you can be guided.
“As for the main 2023 budget, we are lagging by over 50 something per cent, I also strongly believe that we should work around the clock.”
The FG has made progress in its ongoing forensic inquiry into the N30tn Ways and Means, the Finance Minister said the senators.
He added that rising freight prices have delayed the use of compressed natural gas and electric car technologies.
Edun stated that the debt service is current and promised that his ministry would step up its oversight of the revenue-generating organizations.
Edun said, “The procurement of electric and CNG buses and conversion kits, more importantly, has been held up by a spike in the freight costs.
“It’s just the ingenuity of one of the young men that is in that business that when I’ve got a bulk carrier that has a lower freight cost.
Otherwise, the trade cost per bus became daunting and it made people just hold up to see whether this procurement was profitable for them.”
On debt payments, he said, “We have paid $700m in debt services for 420 national development agencies and others”
Speaking on the Ways and Means, “We are also interrogating the N22.7tn that we met on the ground. We instituted a forensic audit to see the impact.
“We are also interrogating the revenues that are due to us from everybody because we need to. The view of the fact that ways and means are going down rather than up, so we are servicing all the debts.”