SENATE NEWS: 2013 budget – Senate directs C’ttee to summon Okonjo-Iweala over performance Posted by: legis admin Posted date: September 20, 2013 | 7:01 am In: SENATE LEGISREPORTS NG – The Senate disturbed by the federal government’s recent position stating that the benchmark revenues estimated in the 2013 budget were over-bloated and no longer realistic to implement as actual revenues, on Thursday directed its Committee on Finance and Appropriation to summon the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to disclose the causes of fallen revenues. It would be recalled that the minister of state for finance, Dr. Yerima Lawan Ngama, had said the 2013 budget was no longer implementable due to certain realities forcing the hand of the Federal Government to hold back on augmented allocations to the three tiers of government. It maintained instead that the three tiers of government will henceforth share only the actual collections to the federation account and not what was initially budgeted. Ngama lamented that, from January 2013 to date, the actual revenue shared by the three tiers of government are “far higher than last year’s”. The decision to summon the Finance Minister was reached by the upper chamber during Thursday’s plenary sequel to consideration of a motion titled: “2013 Budget and Alleged Over Bloated Revenue Estimates.” The motion sponsored by Senate Deputy Majority Leader, Senator Abdul Ningi (Bauchi Central, PDP) was Co-sponsored by 13 other Senators. In his presentation, Senator Ningi said the upper chamber was aware of the National Assembly enactment, guiding the implementation of the budget most especially clause 6 which states thus – “the Minister of Finance shall ensure that funds appropriated under this Act are released to the appropriate agencies and or organs of government as and when due, provided that no funds for any quarter of the fiscal year shall be differed without prior waiver from the National Assembly.” This provision he said was constantly disregarded by the Finance Minister who had approved only a total release of N855,141,000 for capital projects as against N1,591,657,000,000 approved in the 2013 budget; leaving a difference of N736,466,000,000. Senator Ningi noted that the Federal Government’s outcry of the 2013 budget not being implementable, and one blamed on the National Assembly for overblowing the proposed estimates earlier proposed, was not tenable in light of the slight changes made by the latter to the former’s proposal. Highlighting the changes made to Revenue estimates, he said the Bench Mark per Barrel of $75 USD was penned by the National Assembly at $79 USD; Exchange Rate per Naira from N155 to N160; Net Customs Revenue from N2,001,699 to N1,006,594. The lawmaker expressed utter dismay at the utterance of the Minister of State for Finance, one which he maintained “is clearly targeted to blackmail the National Assembly, considering all the revenue variables are within the target expectations.” Ningi said the Senate was thus concerned that “such unguarded pronouncement is capable of sending serious negative signals to the Nigerian citizens and indeed the international community.” Contributing, Senator Kabiru Gaya, APC, Kano, called on the upper chamber to take steps towards investigating the cause for a drop in the country’s revenue from oil. He said: “we should take steps to find out why the incidence of oil theft is on the increase. We need to know who is to blame for the continuing looting of oil revenue which is plundering our revenue.” In his concluding remark, the Senate President David Mark said, “the more serious issue is the level of implementation of the budget and the releases. Our committees should have found out if the monies appropriated we actually released to the MDAs. It is not appropriate for us to wait until the ministers comment before we do our job.”
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 17:32:24 +0000