Buhari to submit 2022 budget to NASS in September

President Buhari is expected to submit the federal government’s N14trillion budget proposed for 2022 to the National Assembly in September for appropriation. This is in order to meet his December 31st deadline for signing into law.

Director-general, Budget office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze announced this on Thursday at a training to equip the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) with skills on how to prepare the 2022 budget using the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System – Budget Preparation Sub-System (GIFMIS/BPS) and in a timely manner. The training involved over 4,000 participants involved in budget preparation from about 900 MDAs.

Akabueze said the Federal Government is determined to ensure consistent and timely preparation, submission and approval of annual budgets as part of its Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms, like in the two previous spending plans.

To achieve this, government has already commenced a series of engagements and stakeholder consultations with key revenue generating agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs), the National Executive Council (NEC), the National Assembly as well as the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on the 2020 budget.

The budget is also intended to be in tandem with extant Federal Government policies and guidelines as articulated in the 2022 budget call circular and other relevant laws/policies, already sent out to the government agencies.

In 2017, the Budget Office activated the GIFMIS-BPS, and has since then used the platform for service-wide preparation of the budgets. Every MDA has since then prepared and submitted its budget online and in “near real-time” using the GIFMIS-BPS application.

Following gains made through the GIFMIS-BPS, especially in helping address some of the challenges that were experienced during budget preparation in prior years, government intends to deploy the platform in 2022 budget preparation.

However, most MDAs do not study the budget call circular in detail and as such make mistakes that should ordinarily be avoided if they had complied with the relevant sections of that circular. One of the modules at the training this year, therefore, focused on key items and sections in the 2022 Call Circular.

Budget submissions are supposed to be in full compliance with the relevant sections of the budget call circular; reflecting MDA’s sectoral mandates, ministerial priority areas as well as relevant contributions to the achievement of the Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2021-2025, ESP & ERGP 2027-21. The budget will also be based on the 9 priority areas/ministerial deliverables mandate.

Akabueze noted that budget authorities had also issued the 2022 FGN Budget Call Circular this year ahead of the training to ensure that all issues and questions that participants may have are adequately addressed during the course of the training sessions.

Meanwhile, the MDAs are expected to explore Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and project finance for commercially viable projects, leverage multi-lateral financing for infrastructure developments, as well as advance projects aligned with the priorities of donors and philanthropic partners.

They are also enjoined to accord priority to ongoing projects, especially those nearing completion that fit into government’s current priorities.

Meanwhile, a standardised framework for making provisions for outsourced services for healthcare institutions is being developed for health institutions. This is expected to resolve issues around internally generated revenues (IGRs) and non-appropriated use of such by the respective health institutions.