2016 budget: Reps pass N70.673bn for NCC

The House of Representatives on Thursday approved N70.673 billion for the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) for the year ending 31 December, 2016, with just a month to the end of the year.
This was sequel to the consideration and approval of the report of the House Committee on Communications, chaired by Saheed Akinade-Fijabi, who was considered at the Committee on Supply, chaired by Speaker Yakubu Dogara.
According to the report, the sum of ₦22,211,186,000 is for recurrent expenditure, while the sum of ₦15,651,475,000 is for Capital Expenditure.
Similarly, the sum of ₦6,557,708,000 was also approved for Special Projects just as the sum of ₦8,584,000,000 and ₦17,668,123,000 will be transferred to the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) and Federal Government of Nigeria, respectively.
On the late presentation of the budget, Fijabi said the report was stepped down on the floor of the House earlier because of typographic errors as well as wrong placement of figures and subsequently apologized to members.
According to the report, the Commission is expected to generate the sum of N29 billion from annual operating levy; N1,195,137,000 from Licensing Fees; N35,799,972,000 from Spectrum Fees; N4,480,538,000 from Numbering Plan; N1,500,000 from Admin Charges; N165,000,000 from Type Approval Fees and N30,345,000 from Sundry Income.
From the total recurrent expenditure N22,211,186,000, the sum of N280 million is for Establishment Costs; N13,950,362,000 for Staff & Other Costs; N1,982,722,000 for Travel Costs; N4,511,485,000 for Operational Costs; N1,471,617,000 for Administration Costs and N15 million for Bank Charges.
From the N15,651,475,000 approved for capital expenditure, the sum of N4,550,913,000 is for Internal Projects; N8,967,562,000 for School Support Programme; N930 million for Digital Bridge Institute and N1,203,000,000 for Consultancies.
To implement special projects, the Commission got approval for N3,071,328,000 for Emergency Communications Centres; N2,236,380,000 for State Accelerated Broadband Initiative; N250 million for Subscribers Data Base Management; N1 billion for ICT Training Programme by DBI; while N8.584 billion is to be transferred to USPF and sum of N17,668,123,000 is to be transferred to Federal Government