Federal Government has said that it realised only N398 billion in 2016 as non oil revenue, which it described as abysmally low out of the projected N1.506 trillion for the year. According to the Federal government, this poor state of non oil revenue led to a loss of about N1.15trillion.
Disclosing this yesterday when he appeared before the Joint Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Appropriations, the Director-General of Budget Office, Dr Ben Akabueze said that the problem created a huge funding gap for the federal government in the execution of the budget. He said that the government has so far spent N870billion out of the projected N1.587trillion capital vote which represents 55 per cent performance.
Ben Akabueze said, “Due to the huge funding gap, government had no any other option in the budget execution than to prioritize implementation of its capital projects for which N870.055billion has already been released out of the estimated N1.587trillion this is about 55 performance performance”.
According to him, with the recent approval for more releases for the capital votes, not less than N1trillion would be the total release for the capital component of the budget. Giving a breakdown of the releases made so far in the N6.06trillion budget, the Accountant –General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris said a total of N2.209trillion have been released for personnel cost representing 100 per cent, a total of N444.122billion for overhead cost, representing 85 per cent.
Others according to him, are N351billion for statutory transfers representing 100% and N1.3trillion for debt service (100%) .
In her own submission at the session, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed said due to shortage of fund for the implementation of the budget, government priotize issuance of capital releases by focusing more on Agriculture and Mining sectors.
Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun told the senators that the huge sums of about N3 trillion perceived to have been “warehoused” in the treasury single account (TSA) do not entirely belong to the federal government.
According to her, such monies are jointly owned by the federal and state governments along with specialised agencies such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), even as she described it as the total collection of monies including monies from Federal Allocation Account Committee, FAAC, adding that the 55 per cent capital release was the highest in recent years.
