2018 Budget: Economist decries non full implementation of 2017 appropriation
. FG should set up monitoring unit to monitor 2018 budget,
An economist, Dr. Emma Gospel Isong has decried the non-full implementation of 2017 budget by Federal Government, even as the President Buhari presented over N8 trillion budget to the National Assembly.
Dr. Isong lamented that “Nigerian Budgets have always over-lapped in governmental issues, 2016 over-lapped into 2017 and 2017 will over-lap into 2018, that means we have not even finished implementing each budget. Now, we are presenting the 2018 and don’t forget there is a N2 trillion deficit in this budget and so was in 2017 budget, we are biting more than we can chew, I really doubt if our sources of revenue will be able to finance this budget.
Speaking to our correspondent on Wednesday, Dr. Isong said “We should not budget only statement of expenditure, it doesn’t really mean the actual N8 trillion budget. This money is being expected from different sources of revenue generation. My challenge is, we are day-dreaming, and where is the money coming from especially in this period of recession.
“The National budget is a dream, there is one thing to dream and another thing is for you to facilitate its reality. The President has presented the dream, (N8 trillion) for 2018 fiscal year, my challenge for this dream is that, the last dream we had, we have two months to go, yet the 2017 budget is not fully implemented.
“We should have a clear cut budgetary year, for instance, January-December, our budgetary years are not steady, sometimes it is in March and another times it is in November, and the other it is April. Some three years ago, it came in April, so we don’t really as a nation have statutory budgetary year or budgetary period.
“Some people are proposing from January-December, so we can assess ourselves. By December, the year has ended and by January the year has started so budget is a dream, so the actual issue is that we should have instrument to actualize the dream.
The Economist regretted that politicians have politicised the budget, adding that budget is a fiscal policy and financial experts should be brought in to fashion way out, not political analysis. “What we do in the National Assembly was that we politicised a very strong and crucial instrument of governance which is the budget.
He advised Federal Government to set up a monitoring to ensure the implementation of the budget, “Federal Government should set up a supervisory committee to monitor the budget implementation, as we have budget presentation, we should have budget monitory unit, to monitor the implementation of the budget in different arms of government and MDAs.
Interestingly, the economist also advised the federal government to increase the spending powers in the budget, the spending power is only 10% and that does not look like we are optimistic of coming out of recession, the more the government spent, its trigger down to the man in the village.
“The government should increase spending powers like in this budget, the spending power is only 10% and that does not look like we are optimistic of coming out of recession, the more the government spent, its trigger down to the man in the village.
He commended President Buhari for making good allocation to power, infrastructure but his fear was that some of those sectors are decaying and government may spent much money reviving them, “There are a lot of infrastructural decay, new project are not very good for Nigeria now and at this time, we should revive ailing and dying structure than sinking more money into new projects.
By Edem Bassey, Calabar
