Senator seeks review of revenue projections in budget

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November 23, 2017 2:54 PM

Danbaba, who represents Sokoto South Senatorial District is worried that the capital aspect of the national budget was usually not implemented above 50 per cent.

A member of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Sen. Ibrahim Danbaba, on Thursday in Abuja advocated the review of revenue projections in the country’s annual budget.

He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the review was necessary in view of issues that emanated from stakeholders’ meeting on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategic Paper (FSP) 2018-2020.

He also expressed concerned on why the situation should remain the same in spite of the fact that the projections were made by the managers of the economy.

“) are struggling to survive because of lack of funds."

“We cannot implement capital projects, and every year they talk of 50 per cent. Why should we be operating this budget at less than 80 per cent?” he said.

“The loan stuff, we have raised about N1.4 trillion but only N450 billion of that amount was used to implement capital projects. That should not be the case,” Danbaba said.

According to him, if there are problems with the projections, then they should be reviewed.

“There are about two institutions that contribute to the failure of the Federal Government’’ budget – Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)."

“If we can sort out the problem of NNPC it will be good, because it has about 27 agencies that are supposed to contribute money to the internally generated component of the budget."

“In fact, they are supposed to contribute not less than 30 per cent of the projected internal revenue segment of the budget, but not even a naira was paid into the revenue account of the federation by the corporation."

“It was not that this money was not raised, it was raised."

“We should privatise NNPC. Once we do that, we will eliminate all sharp practices,” the lawmaker said.

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