Capital component of the 2020 budget only attained 30 percent implementation as at December 31, 2020. BusinessDay recalled that to ensure full implementation of the 2020 budget, the National Assembly extended the capital component of the budget to March 31, 2021.
Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, disclosed this on Monday while responding to questions on the status of the performance of the capital component of the 2020 budget when she appeared before the principal officers of the National Assembly at a joint session.
Ahmed explained that the 2020 budget was passed earlier to make for a January – December cycle implementation, but lamented that the impact of COVID-19 had interrupted the process, thereby causing low performance.
The minister disclosed that there would be another assessment on the budget at the end of February to report the performance.
“We had N1.4 trillion that has been released as capital expenditure and this represents 89 percent.
“So, just to note that the extension meant for agencies to continue to utilise the funds that has already been released to them and we have made an assessment.
“I am afraid to report that the performance utilization of the extended amount was averaging about 30 percent. We are going to make another assessment on the close of February and report the performance,” Ahmed pointed out.
She said the relevant intervention agencies of government would continue to work to close the N100 gap between the exchange window and the parallel market.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, expressed dissatisfaction on the poor budget implementation despite the extended grace period to March 31, 2021.
Gbajabiamila said for optimal growth and development, the National Assembly had accepted to extend the capital component of the 2020 budget to enable full implementation.
The speaker said he had been reliably informed by members of the House on oversight function pointing to low performance of the capital component of the 2020 budget few weeks to the end of the three months extension.
According to Gbajabiamila, “The leadership of the National Assembly is basically carrying out an oversight on the extension that we have granted for three months.
“You are all aware that for good reason, we have to do this extension, there was COVID-19 last year, several other things affected the budget process and even though we have to extend some part of it for the minister and her team at the level of implementation throughout last year.
“Is it high? How high has it been in a long time? Or we haven’t achieved a 100 percent and we are on the same page so we just take an extension, and with capital and what does the 100 percent do that can break through this cycle.
“Or do we just ask for the sequence of extension, if we are extending the implementation of the capital project? We are basically trying to make sure social development and growth of the country is achieved optimally.
“Now, it is not an unusual thing to extend the life of a budget. So if we do, do that which is not illegal, we expect that there will be result. It will not be extension for the sake of extension but there should be reasonable and visible identifiable result.
“Now, we are about four weeks to the end of that extension and we do not seem to know where we are, where we stand, that we need to do.
“I do not want to pre-empt anything, but I know members have made several observation in their oversight of various agencies since the extension. Like I said, I do not want to extend but I learnt that there are certain delays; some of them deliberate for whatever reason.
“I am not going to mince words about it, which is why we called for this meeting; otherwise there would not have been need for it.”
