The House of Representatives has called on the Federal Government to ensure that the extension for implementation of capital projects in the 2020 budget is matched by visible and identifiable results.
This was disclosed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, during the visit of the Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, to the National Assembly on Monday.
The Speaker described the level of implementation of the 2020 budget as the highest recorded since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.
He said, “The extension for implemntation of capital projects in the 2020 budget must be matched by visible and identifiable results needed to achieve quantifiable development and growth.
“Let me commend the minister and her team for the level of implementation throughout last year. It was really high, probably the highest we have seen in a long time; if not in history, in recent times, but we wanted to achieve a hundred per cent and we are on the same page.”
According to him, “We are basically trying to make sure social development and growth for the country are achieved optimally.
“It’s not a usual thing to extend the life of your budget – a budget is supposed to be for a year. So, if we do that which is not the norm, we expect there’ll be a result, and it will not just be an extension for the sake of it. There’ll be visible, identifiable results,” the Speaker added.
Briefing the lawmakers on the performance of the 2020 budget, the Finance Minister said that the Federal Government retained revenue was N3.94 trillion which represents 73% of the target for the year.
What you should know
- The Federal Government’s share of the oil revenue was N1.5 trillion which represents 157% performance over and above the prorated target for 2020.
- This is because the crude oil price performed better than the 28 dollars per barrel that it had projected.
- The collection was 1.28million barrels per day representing 79 per cent performance of the revised target.
- Company income tax performed at 82 per cent and 68 per cent respectively of the target for the year.
Customs revenue performance was 79 per cent. Other revenue, which includes Independent Revenue, was budgeted at N993.73 billion. The performance was N519.36 billion.
“Considering the challenges of the year, this is a reasonably good performance, in fact, this performance is higher than several previous years backwards.
“At the close of the year, we had released 89 per cent of the capital budget, and what we rolled over was only the un-utilized portion of the budget and it is that un-utilized portion that we are now tracking the performance and that by the end of January, performance of in-utilized portion is about 30%,” Ahmed stated.
