The National Assembly, last week, passed the N8.916 trillion 2019 budget. The lawmakers also raised President Muhammadu Buhari’s earlier proposal of N8.826 trillion by N90 billion. Also, the deficit of N1.86 trillion proposed by President Buhari was increased to N1.908 trillion. The passage of the budget by the legislature came a little more than four months after the budget estimate was presented to the joint sitting of the National Assembly by the President in December last year.
We welcome the passage of the Appropriation Bill and call for the President’s quick assent and close monitoring of the budget implementation. This has become expedient because a budget that is not monitored cannot be strictly implemented. This can explain why our previous budgets did not achieve much in terms of implementation.
Out of the N90billion added to the President’s budget estimate, N23.67billion was earmarked for severance gratuity for outgoing legislators and their aides and induction of new lawmakers; N10billion as Federal Government’s intervention for tackling humanitarian crisis in Zamfara State, and additional N6billion for security agencies to tackle rising insecurity across the country.
A breakdown of the budget showed that N2.094 trillion was allocated for capital expenditure, and within the capital component of the budget, N394.906 billion for Power, Works and Housing, N107.218 billion for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, N159.125 billion for Defence, N92.178 billion for Water resources, N58.6 billion for Education, and N179 billion for Transportation.
The sum of N4.055 trillion was earmarked for recurrent expenditure and N502 billion for Statutory transfers. Others included a fiscal deficit of N1.908 trillion within the ambit of 1.37 per cent deficit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a special intervention fund of N500 billion. Interestingly, all the parameters upon which the budget estimates were based by the Executive were retained by the National Assembly. They included the $60 per barrel oil price benchmark, 2.3 million barrel per day production level, and the N360 to $1 exchange rate.
On paper, many things appear to be good with the budget. However, it should be pointed out that our past budgets failed to achieve their objectives due to ineffective monitoring and implementation. We hope that the 2019 budget will not suffer the same fate. To ensure effective implementation of the 2019 budget, we urge the President to quickly assent to the Appropriation Bill now before him. He is at liberty to submit supplementary budget to the National Assembly if there is need for that.
It is regrettable that our past budgets were not fully implemented, especially their capital components that ought to drive infrastructure development. For instance, the implementation of the capital component of the 2017 and 2018 budgets was 21 and 15 per cent, respectively. There is no doubt that late presentation of the budget by the President to the National Assembly, late passage and delayed assent might have accounted for the poor implementation of the nation’s budgets.
Going forward, we call for a return to the December-January budget cycle. It will be recalled that President Buhari had in 2017 promised to return the budget calendar to December- January cycle but reneged by withholding his assent to the bill that would have made it possible.
So far, our budget preparations have been rather tardy. The fragmented budget process and the accusation of “budget paddling” can explain why federal budgets rarely achieve more than 30 per cent implementation.
There are concerns that the 2019 budget may suffer poor implementation because of the rift between the executive and the leadership of the 8th National Assembly. Henceforth, there is need to harmonise the budget planning processes in order to ensure effective implementation.
Without strict implementation of the budget, particularly the capital component, it will be difficult to achieve the objectives contained in the Economic and Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) and other programmes of the administration.
Nigerians are looking forward to the President’s assent to the budget and its strict implementation. The government should embrace result-oriented spending in this fiscal year that will bring about inclusive growth and sustainable development. In order to stimulate the economy, the government must ensure that the budget is faithfully implemented.