The House of Representatives on Thursday unveiled plans to reduce the 2018 recurrent expenditure put at N3.494 trillion. The move is aimed at cutting the N2.005 trillion fiscal deficit and borrowing estimated at N1.699 trillion.
Specifically, Chairmen of some of the Standing Committees who interfaced with Ministers and heads of federal agencies during the 2017/2018 budget defence, queried the annual requests for procurement of new furniture, computers and vehicles.
Worried by the duplication and annual proposals for computers, paper shreding machines as well as motor vehicles reflected across over 1,000 Federal Ministries, Departments, Commissions and Parastatals, the lawmakers vowed to prioritize key capital projects that will impact positively on socio-economic development of the country.
Speaking during the budget defence of Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, Sylvester Onuigbo, chairman, House Committee on Commerce directed all the MDAs requesting for computers in the 2018 budget to comply with Federal Government’s directive by to roll out policy that no agency should procure computers without recourse to NITDA.
He observed that some items keep resurfacing every year. Take for example, in the Education Ministry, they keep developing curriculum every year, the same thing happened to data collection, it should be for some years but they keep reflecting annually.
“That is why the government says no ministry should provide computer without going through NITDA.
“For people that have furniture in 2017, we won’t be tolerating furniture in 2018, because those items including computers have life spans. Those who procured utility vehicles in 2017, we will disapprove it in 2018, expect in cases when we have expansion,” Onuigbo said.
To this end, the lawmakers urged all the Ministers and Heads of federal agencies to identify those items and make recommendations for the redeployment of resources to note productive projects.
For 2018 financial year, total sum of 95,372,284,175 proposed for Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment and 18 agencies, the sum of N10,390,132,014 is for personnel cost; N2,065,004,601 is for overhead while N82,917,147,560 is for capital expenditure.
According to the 2018 budget proposal presented to the Committee, the sum of N19.280 billion was proposed for Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and N1 billion for Enabling Business Environment.
The sum of N22.816 billion was proposed for Research and Development; N100 million for procurement of buses; N49 million for purchase of computer; N18.489 million for purchase of industrial equipment; N300 million for digitalization and development of industrial database; N100.215 million for implementation of Nigeria AgriBusiness and Agro-Industry development initiative (NAAD); N150 million for Made-in-Nigeria; N150 million for implementation of Executive Order 1 & 3 – Digitalization/Automation and N240 million for Development of Priority Products.
The sum of N111.942 million for payment of outstanding liabilities on implemented projects; N40.625 million for monitoring of crude oil & gas at various 29 export terminals to ensure quality exported conform with approval (export permit) and the generation of metrology data in 2018 against the sum of N50.061 million spent in 2017.
In 2017, total sum of N92,524136,838 was allocated to Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment and 16 agencies under its purview in the 2017 Appropriation Act, out of which N9,096,140,010 was for personnel, N1,701,025,769 was for overhead and N81,726,971,059 was for capital expenditure.
