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The Federal Government has failed to fulfil its promise of submitting the 2018 budget proposal in October to the National Assembly.
This followed the inability of President Muhammadu Buhari to submit the 2018 budget on Tuesday, October 31st, 2017 to the joint session of the National Assembly.
Recall that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun and her counterpart in Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma had at different fora assured that next year’s appropriation bill would be submitted to the National Assembly in October.
But at Senate plenary on Tuesday – being the last day of October – the President failed to present the budget.
As of the close of plenary on Tuesday, the President is yet to communicate with the National Assembly, seeking a date to present the 2018 budget to the two legislative chambers.
Although President Buhari had forwarded the 2018 to 2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF)/ Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) to a joint session of the National Assembly on October 17 for approval, both legislative chambers are yet to approve the document.
Also, the National Assembly is yet to approve the N135.6billion virement, $5.5billion foreign loan as well as the 2017 budgets of over 25 federal government agencies before it.
In a chat with BusinessDay on Tuesday, a member of the Senate Public Accounts Committee, Foster Ogola (PDP, Bayelsa State) said he had long predicted that the Federal Government would not meet up with the October promise of presenting the 2018 budget proposal.
The lawmaker also called on President Buhari to sign the Procurement Bill passed by the National Assembly into law.
He placed the implementation of the N2.177 trillion capital budget for 2017 at 10 percent.
His words: “You don’t bring MTEF in October and expect your budget to come in in October. And I had predicted that the Federal Government cannot present the (2018) budget in October. Today is 31st October where is the budget for 2018? This year’s budget, hardly any public sector office – ministry, department and agency – has awarded one contract. They are still reviewing. We have reduced the Procurement Act implementation from six months to three months. Mr President is yet to sign it; so that the Procurement process system in compliance with the Procurement Act will be shortened.
“The implementation of the 2015, 2016 and the 2017 budgets have been poor because of the burden that comes with the budget. This year, maximum implementation of the capital budget is 10 percent.
“As a person, I am not satisfied with the budgeting pattern because the budget comes with too much carry-overs that are hanging on the neck and you cannot implement.”
Citing Section 18 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a National Assembly source said the MTEF/FSP out to have been approved and sent back to the Executive before it prepares the budget. He therefore faulted the approval of the 2018 budget by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) last week, without recourse to MTEF, which is yet to be approved and which ought to be the basis for preparing the appropriation bill.
According to him, the late submission of MTEF to the National Assembly and refusal to comply with relevant laws guiding budget preparations had always been the causes of challenges plaguing Nigeria’s budgeting process.
Section 18 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act states that: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in this Act or any other law, the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework shall: (1) be the basis for the preparation of the estimates of revenue and expenditure required to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly under section 81 (1) of the Constitution.
“(2) The sectoral and compositional distribution of the estimates of expenditure referred to in subsection (1) of this section shall be consistent with the medium term developmental priorities set out in the Medium Term expenditure Framework.”
Speaking at Situation Room Dialogue last month, Osinbajo had assured that the National Assembly would get the 2018 budget proposal in October.
In an interview with State House correspondents in August during a retreat on the implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and the 2018 budget preparation process, Udoma had promised that the Federal Government would do everything in its power to ensure that the 2018 Appropriation Bill is submitted to the National Assembly in October as earlier promised.
“Ours is to follow the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which has some timelines and we are trying to keep strictly to those timelines.
“So, the budget will get to the National Assembly by October. That was our commitment. We will go all out to make that happen,” the minister had said.
In the same vein, appearing before the joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance last month, Adeosun had said efforts were being made to end the life of the budget in December 2017, to bring back the January-December financial year in line with the recommendations of the Senate Committee on Budget Reform.
