Federal Government retracts 56% budget implementation claim

Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The Federal Government has retracted an earlier claim by government that it has achieved 56 per cent implementation of the 2012 budget.

The retraction is contained in documents submitted to the Senate Committee on Appropriations by officials of the finance ministry during an interactive session called by the Senate on Tuesday. The officials were not allowed to make any presentation because of the absence of Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The documents clearly show that the 2012 budget implementation is 12.6 per cent. The documents show that a total of N324.56bn was cash backed, but only N184.84bn was released as at July 20.

According to the documents, the N184.84bn when calculated against the total capital budget of N1.519tn is 12.16 per cent of performance.

The ministry also clarified that the capital budget when subtracted from the SURE-P allocations, totaled N1.34tn and the final percentage implementation with N184.8bn utilisation was 13.79 per cent.

The distribution of the releases, as shown on the table presented to the Senate, indicated that the percentage implementation was calculated against the level of utilisation.

The table shows the Code of Conduct Bureau as having the highest level of utilisation with 98.93 per cent, closely followed by Federal Civil Service Commission and the Niger Delta Ministry with 98.93 per cent and 96.03 per cent respectively.

The Ministry of Communication Technology posted the lowest performance level of 16.45 per cent, having been able to utilize 136.5m out of a total cash backed N829.4m.

The Ministry of Justice also performed poorly with 16.93 per cent, as it was only able to spend N18.22m out of a total N107.65m within the period.