The economy will soon receive a major boost as the federal government
plans to increase releases for capital projects in the budget to N440 billion by next week. A federal government team, comprising Kemi Adeosun, minister of Finance; Udo Udoma, minister of Budget and National Planning; Zainab Ahmed, minister of State for Budget and National Planning and Ben Akabueze, director-general, Budget Office of the Federation, revealed this while briefing the joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance on the implementation of the 2017 Appropriation Act in Abuja on Tuesday.
The team also said the N100 billion from the recent Sukuk bond subscription would be used to fund capital projects.
According to the team, the government has so far released the sum of N340 billion for capital projects from the 2017 Appropriation Act in addition to the N1.2 trillion released between January and June this year from the 2016 capital budget.
The team said the federal government had directed its Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, to roll over between 50 and 60 per cent of their capital projects to the next fiscal year.
It also announced that revenue amounting to N2.305 trillion was generated in the first half of this year from the projected N2.542 trillion revenue for the period, indicating a shortfall of nine per cent. The government had projected N5.084 trillion revenue in the 2017 budget.
The team urged the National Assembly to fast-track the process and approval of requests for external borrowings, which would be used to fund the capital budget.
Udoma said, “In order to go back to January to December as the fiscal year, this particular year will be very short. You will not expect us to disburse N2.1tn in such a short time; the procurement processes will not even allow it. So, we have told the MDAs to roll over 50 to 60 per cent of their projects; the projects will not be lost.”
Adeosun assured that the revenue figures had improved compared to a similar period in 2016. “Cumulative release on current expenditure is N1.5 tn. We are fully on course in terms of salaries’ releases; statutory transfers are N128.8bn; redemption fund for pensions is N37.8bn; overheads, N92.4bn; service-wide vote is N223.6bn; capital expenditure is N340.9bn; and we successfully raised N100bn to be released this week. At the end of this week, we would have released about N440.9bn on capital budget for 2017,” she said.