NASS Slams Finance Minister …Over Poor Budget Implementation

The National Assembly (NASS) has berated the Minister of Finance, Mr Olusegun Aganga  over poor implementation of the 2010 appropriation.

The minister who appeared before the Senate- House of Reps joint committee on appropriation had said that as at last September, the 2010 budget had attained 53.47per cent implementation level.

But the Minister’s explanations could not cut ice with the lawmakers who disputed the figure and insisted that by the data collated from the various ministries and parastatals during their oversight visits, less than 30 per cent of capital implementation of the budget had been achieved.

Chairman of the House Committee on Internal Affairs, Jerry Manwe clearly told the Finance Minister that the lawmakers who are politicians mainly look at how much of the projects for their constituencies are in progress or completed on schedule.

His words: “don’t forget this is election year and our people are saying that we are liars in that the roads we promised to repair for them have not been repaired and this is already October.

“You are talking of putting money into the excess crude account. What is our business with that. Is it not the money that you share with the governors to do whatever you like? From our findings through our oversight duties in the ministries, we have discovered that the level of budget implementation is under 30 per cent”.

In response, the Minister, insisted that his ministry was on the right track “I don’t recognise your figures. I keep the record of finance”, Aganga said.

At this point, at the instance of the finance minister, the Chairman of the Joint Committee, Senator Iyiola Omisore asked correspondents to leave the venue while the minister gave them further information to help his query.

The Minister of Finance said the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) would, today (Thursday) receive from the Federal Government the balance of N11 billion of the N87 .7 billion supplementary budget approved for the 2011 elections.

The meeting was meant to ascertain the level  of performance of the 2010 budget and also for him to answer questions on allegations of delay in disbursement of fund meant for budget 2010 implementation as alleged by various ministries and parastatals.

The minister said , the revenue was doing well as the N2.4trillion target for the period had not only been fully realised but that excess revenue was even transferred into the excess crude oil account.

The Federal Ministry of Finance he added had also fully released recurrent portion of the budget which is N3.2 trillion for the whole year while the capital release for the fourth quarter of the year would be dispensed with today (Thursday).

According to Aganga, although government had fully realised the projected budget revenue, there was already a budget deficit of N2.6 trillion for 2010.

Nneka Amaechi- Nnadi (Abuja)