DG Tasks Nigerians On Budget Performance

The Director General, Infrastructure Concessioning Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr Mansur Ahmed,  has advised all Nigerians to be interested in the performance of annual budgets

Ahmed, who gave the advice at the 2013 Nigerian Economic/Business Conference in Lagos, said that the citizenry should not continue to be spectators.

The theme of the conference was “Nigerian Budget 2013: Translating Economic Growth Opportunities into Profitable Realities”.

According to him, the citizenry should find out aspects of the budget that touch their lives and businesses and ask questions on their performance.

“Each person must find the area that affects him in the budget and be prepared to ask questions.

“Nigerians must demand the performance and this has to be on the effective implementation of the budget and not the percentage that has been implemented,” he said.

The director general reiterated that the 2013 budget was aimed at addressing major issues of infrastructure, agriculture, job creation and fiscal consolidation.

He said that these areas, if effectively implemented, would make it different from the past budgets.

According to him, good leadership should be the aim of government at all levels.

The Founder of Sam Ohuabunwa Foundation for Economic Empowerment, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, said that the budget determined what the private sector would do in a year.

Ohuabunwa said that this was the reason the sector took interest in analysing the budget to set its own targets and business outlook for 2013. According to him, the 2013 total budget is N4.99 trillion out of which N1.54 trillion and N2.41 trillion will be for capital and recurrent expenditures, respectively.

He said that the issue of budgeting higher for recurrent expenditure should be looked at carefully as it had not benefitted the majority of the citizens.