Business
Group Decries Drop In FG’s Agric Budget
A Non-Governmental
Organisation (NGO), Alternaid Nigeria, has decried the consistent drop in budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector.
The executive director, Programmes, of the group, Mr. Andrew Haruna, who disclosed this to The Tide on Friday said the decreasing allocation had continued to affect the actualization of the Maputo Declaration of African Heads of State and Government at the African Union.
He said that based on the NGO’s Just-concluded analysis of Federal Government’s 2015 agriculture budget as proposed, allocation to the sector had dropped from 1.7 percent in 2003 to 1.44 percent in 2014 and 0.9 percent in 2015.
He, however, said that the most important thing was the utilization of the budget to the benefit of the people, adding that the budget is a vital tool for the development of the country.
“For us to grow as a nation, we have identified that agriculture is our next oil. We are concerned that there should be more efficient utilization which should be to the benefit of the citizens.
“You can’t just have a 100 percent budget and at the end of the day, only 60 percent is being utilized or implemented,” he said.
According to him, efforts are being made to present an opportunity for stakeholders to engage with the budget and make demands for an increased allocation to the sector.
The Maputo Declaration was made by African Heads of State and Government at the African Union in July 2003 in Maputo.
The Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa required the commitment to the allocation of at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agricultural and rural development policy implementation within five years.
Corlins Walter