ECOWAS presents $602m 2019 Budget to parliament

The Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS) on Tuesday, presented a budget proposal of $602 million (381,612,734) Units of Account, to the Parliament for 2019 fiscal year.

The budget proposal which is a 34.7 per cent increase (98, 817, 554) UA, on the 2018 budget, has 73.9 per cent dedicated to community programmes, while 26.1 per cent would be the cost of administration.

The Administration and Finance Committee (AFC) of the ECOWAS Commission presented the financial statement, at the ongoing Second Ordinary Session of the parliament in Abuja on Tuesday.

This is the first time the Parliament is exerting its oversight function, giving it opportunity to contribute to the budget of the community.

The Budget figures was in West African Units of Accounts (UA) and using the budget document, 1 U.S. dollar is equals to 0.6337 UA.

Mr Musa Sani Nuhu, Chairman of the AFC, who presented the budget, revealed that in the breakdown, the commission is to get UA 228, 368, 638, parliament to get UA 19, 483, 286, 790 while the Community Court is to get UA 16, 202, 778.

Musa added that UA 48, 033, 434 was proposed for the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), UA 10, 660, 210 for the Inter-Governmental Action Group Against Money Laundering (GIABA) while the Auditor General’s office is to get UA 5, 547, 666.

After reviewing the initial proposal from 383,727,365 UA, to 381, 612, 734 UA, the AFC revealed that the Budget would be primarily financed with Community levies (202,870,316) UA, external funding(111,523,115) UA, arrears of community levy (60,894,454) UA, among other sources.

According to him, other sources of the funding included, Reserves (UA 4, 357, 366), Arrears of contribution (UA 1, 768, 710), other income (UA 198, 773).

At the end of the presentation, the parliament referred the budget proposal to the Ad-hoc Committee on Administration, Finance and Budget Control to report back to plenary on Saturday.