Business
Minister Clears Air On SURE-P Finances
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that her office is not in charge of the finances of the Subsidy Re-investment Programme ( SURE-P).
Okonjo-Iweala made the statement in Abuja during an investigative hearing on the operation and management of SURE-P, organised by the House of Representatives Special Joint Committee on SURE-P.
She said that all the questions on how the funds were spent should be directed to the Chairman of the Programme, Dr Christopher Kolade.
The minister said, “the director-general, who is the accounting officer of the programme, does not report to me.
“Even the accounting officer of SURE-P ( DG Budget Office) does not report to me.”
She defended the decision of the Federal Government to set up the management team for the fund rather than allowing the MDAs to manage it.
“It was the desire of Nigerians to see the funds were managed separately.
“This led to the issue of creating a committee to manage the funds in a manner that Nigerians could see that the monies were transparently utilised,” she said.
The Director- General of Budget Office, Dr Bright Okogu, debunked the allegation that the SURE-P programme was a duplication of the work of MDAs.
Okogu said out of the N180 billion for the programme, N1 billion was dedicated to the running of the office out of which N536.35 million had already been spent, leaving a balance of N463 million.
He said all the monies given to the MDAs under the SURE-P programme should be looked at as additional budgetary provision for them.
“It is this additional budgetary principle that we are using to drive the SURE-P Programme and it’s not duplication, “ Okogwu said.
According to him, claims are made through the Board of SURE-P by Programme Implementation Units (PIUs) and the board verifies before payment.
On his part, Kolade said that N 180 billion was budgeted for the programme in 2012 out of which N105 billion was paid to contractors for various jobs.
He said that one of the challenges faced by the programme was how to convince Nigerians that the programme would be beneficial to them.