UPDATED: Budget office presents draft MTEF to NEC

In early preparations to beat an October deadline to submit the 2018 budget to the National Assembly, Nigeria’s Budget Planning authorities on Thursday submitted a draft Medium Term Framework for 2018-2021 to the National Economic Council (NEC) for input.

The MTEF which is anchored on the ERGP document will be submitted to the Federal Executive Council for final approval and preparation for onward transmission to the National Assembly.

Nigeria currently in its worst ever recession had unveiled an economic plan to kick-start the economy.

However, there are fears that policy changes in the United States and Britain’s exit from European Union amongst others may impact negatively on Nigeria’s economic growth.

This was disclosed by the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed while briefing journalists the monthly NEC meeting, presided over by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo. She said the document will presented to the Federal Executive Council for approval in two weeks.

While assenting to the 2017 budget, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo had said the 2018 budget will be submitted to the National Assembly by October this year for early completion to enable the government return to a January to December budget circle.

Ahmed said the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma who made the presentation to NEC informed them that current Global Economic outlook posited that the country is expecting growth, though there are still some challenges that may impact negatively on growth from now till 2020. He listed policy changes in the US and Britain’s
exit from European Union, the climate change issue, oil price fluctuations as some of the uncertainties.
He however, assured that the country is already getting out of recession even as oil prices are still sliding. The non-oil sector is also seeing some growth.

Ahead of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking next year, 2018, NEC received presentations from the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, on Reforming Nigeria at the Subnational level, emphasizing the need to bring Enabling Business Environment Reforms to all tiers of Government and indeed to all
Nigeria. He said appropriate templates are already being drawn up to prepare States for the exercise. Also, a National Steering Committee has been constituted to ensure synergy across all stakeholders to ensure the coordinated delivery of the reform objectives.

Enelamah told journalists at the briefing that in his presentation to council he harped on the correlation between Ease of Doing Businesses Ranking and Economic prosperity.

According to the Minister, the Businesses Enabling Environment Agenda being coordinated by the Presidential Enabling Businesses Council is at the heart of Government Agenda, whose mandate is to: Remove critical bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints to doing businesses in Nigeria, aimed at moving the country upwards in global
businesses ranking.

Areas of focus in removing the bottlenecks include; starting a business, entry and exit of people, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders and the ease of getting construction permits. He informed council that some States such as Kaduna, Ogun, Cross River and Anambra have already
commenced work to improve the ease of doing business in their respective domains.

Council also received briefing from an earlier constituted Implementation Monitoring Committee chaired by the minister of state for budget and national planning to monitor challenges of implementing projects in states.

Ahmed told council that the committee monitored 27 States  and it was noticed that intervention funded and partnership projects between States, FG or development partners were successful. State based Enterprises (SBES) complained of foreign exchange distortions, irregular power supply and uncertain cash plans as major factors
inhibiting performance amongst other challenges. The committee recommended amongst other things that challenges of rural banking (farmers and vendors etc) CBN and participant banks should be tasked to find innovative, efficient and sustainable means of handling BVN registration and other non-traditional banking services to the informal groups are as part of its financial inclusion strategies.

Council received a report from the Ecological committee led by Kaduna State governor, Nasiru EL-Rufai and approved stringent new criteria for the disbursement of the Ecological Fund by states.

The committee which was set up by the NEC in April, 2017 recommended among other things, “a robust governance structure and a stringent disbursement criteria to sanitize the management of the fund.”

According to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia state who briefed on the matter, the committee’s recommendations approved by NEC include physical visitation by the Ecological office team and on-the-spot assessment and verification of the ecological disaster, technical evaluation of the disaster by experts and community involvement.

Prior to the disaster, there must be evidence of advocacy, evidence of existing prompt and emergency response mechanism in place before the disaster,

Monitoring and evaluation framework must be build into the application of Ecological Fund as a road map for measuring performance of the fund.

A feedback team that will review the reports of the disbursement must be in place while adequate publicity of Ecological disaster to create awareness and consciousness in the citizenry to avoid future occurrence is now necessary.

Also, evidence of cost estimate must be attached to application, adequate justification for the project must be given while due process in vendor engagement must be followed.

NEC also approved the recommendations that at all times, 50% of the Federal Government’s share or N20 billion must be reserved for emergencies at the discretion of Mr President.

Ikpeazu said council was also briefed on the balances in the following accounts as at 19th July, 2017: Excess Crude Account (ECA) $2.303 billion, Ecological Fund Account, N27.466 billion; Stabilization Account, N2.553 billion and Development of Natural Resources Account, N77.922 billion.