The Federal Government has spent 78 per cent of its budget on salaries from 2012 -2017.
United Nations developmental plan (UNDP) recommends that 30 per cent of a country budget should be allocated for recurrent expenditure.
Over the years government spending on recurrent expenses has been higher than capital projects. Infrastructural spending which should be the major focus in any country budget has been neglected due to the fact that more funds are allocated to salaries of ministries, agencies and organizations.
During the Senate review of the 2018 budget proposal last week. The recurrent expenditure was one of the issues raised in the hearing. Out of N8.6 trillion , N3.5 trillion and N2.4 trillion was proposed to recurrent and capital expenditure respectively.
Senator Ben Murry Bruce said that the continuous increase in recurrent cost has made the cost of governance high. He maintained that there are many agencies in Nigeria which has outlived their usefulness e.g. Voice of Nigeria, News agency Nigeria etc. and some of these agencies should be either be scarped or reduced.
BusinessDay analysis of Budget Office of Nigeria showed that N11 trillion has been spent from the total of N13.3 trillion naira budgeted for recurrent expenditure from 2012 -2017.
In 2012, 98.9 per cent was spent which was slightly higher when compared to the 98.8 per cent spent in 2013.
In 2014, 79.7 per cent was spent which was lesser when compared to 80.4 per cent in 2015.Only two quarterly implementation reports for 2014 were available in the budget office.
Then in 2016 ,91.1 per cent was spent which was lower than 18.9 per cent when compared to 2017.Half a year report for 2017 was only available from the budget office. As the implementation of the budget started from June of this year due to late delivery of the budget.
“It is not good enough that you have recurrent expenditure accounting for about 70 per cent of our budget year in year out that means you are spending so much just to run the business of the government that is not good for our infrastructural development and it is not also in the interest of our economy as a whole for that kind of trend to continue.” Said Musa Yusuf ,Director of Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He also said that high personnel cost on education ,health , defence is necessary and in terms of the core civic service can be reduced in terms of agencies ,ministries etc.
And the budget has to be reviewed to have resources to develop infrastructures and make our economy productive u .Musa said
“Government keep on employing more people ,prices of things are going up and all the things needed to run the government are increasing year in and year out “said Ayo Akinwunmi ,Head of Research FSDH Merchant Bank.
He also said rationalizing the ministries will reduce the cost of running them and that a ministry should do perform the same function not many ministries doing the same thing.
BY: BUNMI BAILEY
