Presidency lauds Saraki over reform of budget process

The Presidency on Thursday commended the Senate President Bukola Saraki for initiating the reform of the nation’s budgeting process. It said the executive fully supports the move.

Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, according to a statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the Senate President Sanni Onogu disclosed this during the formal presentation of the report of the Technical Committee on the Budget Reform Process in Nigeria.

“This initiative of Your Excellency, the Senate President, is an initiative that has the full support of the executive.

“We believe that the budget and the budget process is something that we have to work on together closely and collaboratively.

“Consequently, your initiative to look at the reform of the process is an initiative that we welcome and which was why the Director General of the Budget Office, with my authority, participated fully in the deliberations” he said.

In his remarks after receiving the report from the Chairman of the Technical Committee and Leader of the Senate Ali Ndume, the Senate described the report as one of the most important exercises of the Senate so far, while commending the Committee for complying with the stipulated time frame for the exercise.

“I agree that the recommendations require the review of certain laws, but I think there are some of them that have to do with processes. I think we can immediately begin to implement those that have to do with processes.

“As we all know, for many years, this has been an area of acrimony and disaffection between the two arms of government which is mainly due to ambiguities in some of the laws and processes,” Saraki said.

Earlier, Ndume noted that the low development indicators and lacklustre performance of the economy in general are not unconnected with inefficient and ineffective public financial management and budgeting in particular.

He noted that the broad objective of the exercise is to address the pitfalls and challenges in the budget process and significantly improve formulation, enactment, implementation, monitoring and evaluation with a view to improving budget performance and development outcomes.