2018 budget: FG releases N820bn capital expenditure to MDAs

…Withdraws $1bn from Excess Crude Account for security …We’re working to push releases to N1.1tr by end of December – Minister Despite the late passage of the 2018 budget, the Federal Government has announced the release of N820.57 billion to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as capital expenditure for the 2018 Budget. Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, who disclosed this on Thursday during the 2019 Budget breakdown, in Abuja, said that the N820.57 billion represents 43 per cent of the MDAs capital project. The minister also disclosed that the government would soon increase the fund for capital expenditure to N1.1 trillion before the end of the year. Mrs. Ahmed explained that the government has equally made releases that go to the statutory transfer agencies which are released to them en block and that amount includes both their personnel, recurrent as well as capital. She said: “Let me first of all say that the N820.57 billion that has been released is just for MDA capital because we have releases also that go to the statutory transfer agencies that are released to them en block and that amount includes both their personnel, recurrent as well as capital. “There are also capital releases that are done as part of the capital supplementation. That is to say its service wide that is not in the N820.57 billion. The N820.57 billion is 43 per cent of MDA capital. We are working to push this to N1.1trillion by the end of December and that would be including the statutory transfers.” The Minister also explained the reason for the depletion of the Excess Crude Account (ECA) from $2.319 billion as at last month to $631 million this month, saying that about $1 billion was withdrawn for security purposes. Similarly, she said, about N50 billion was refunded on Wednesday into the account. “The excess crude account was refunded yesterday (Wednesday) and we had sent another 50 billion savings into the excess crude account. Recall that NEC had authorised the use of $1billion from the excess crude account for security. So, the performance of that instruction is what has produced what we have in the excess crude account. “So it’s been largely depleted but we are still saving to it and this is the third month that we have been saving consistently into the excess crude oil account,” she said. By Mathew Dadiya, Abuja