Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The absence of the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, his Finance counterpart, Zanaib Ahmed, as well as the Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hammed Ali (retd), stalled the consideration of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF)/Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP), at the House of Representatives, yesterday.
Others absent at the public hearing include the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele; the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris; Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Babatunde Fowler; NNPC Group Managing Director (GMD), Maikanti Baru, among others.
The House joint Committee on Finance, Appropriation, Loans, Aids and Debt Management, Customs and National Budget and Research Office, which organised the hearing, expressed displeasure over the absence of the ministers and other heads of agencies at the public hearing. However, the joint Committee said they will be given a new date to appear next week.
The Chairman, House Committee on Finance, Babangida Ibrahim, said although the House has resolved to treat the 2019 Appropriation Bill as a priority, the absence of heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) was unfortunate.
Ibrahim said, “the House has sent a notice of invitation to all the stakeholders and MDAs involved in the MTEF and FSP so that we can discuss it against the backdrop of the preparation of the 2019 budget.
“We are here today but unfortunately, we discovered that almost all the heads of the agencies that are key to discussing the MTEF are not here. The Minister of National Planning is not here, the Minister of Finance is not here, Accountant-General of the Federation is not here, Comptroller of Customs is not here, chairman of FIRS is not here, GMD of NNPC is not here, Director of DPR is not here, CBN governor is not here. In fact, almost all of them. The only person that is available is the DG, Debt Management.
“So you can see that we cannot proceed to discuss the MTEF in the absence of these key players. That is why we have to adjourn the meeting. We are going to give them a new date next week. We hope they will attend to our invitation.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has set up a committee to harmonise oil and gas revenue and production data of government earnings from all sectors of the economy.
Mr. Tim Okon, Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, at the inaugural meeting of the committee in Abuja, on Tuesday, said they would ensure that policymakers have access to reliable data.
He said that access to consistent set of data would facilitate enlightened decision to take place for growth and development, adding that the petroleum fiscal consistency network was driven by three federal ministries – Finance, Petroleum Resources as well as Budget and National Planning.