UPDATE: Why I’m Worried About 2018 Budget – Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari has registered his concern over the newly-signed 2018 budget, which took him a whole month to approve, after the National Assembly had passed the bill.

The President sighed this fiscal budget into law at the noon of June 20 at the Presidential Villa since May 26 that the Senate President, Bukola Saraki in the company of other lawmaker reverted the bill.

He established his worries over legislature’s changes saying:

“I am however concerned about some of the changes National Assembly has made to the budget proposals I presented. The logic behind the Constitutional direction that budgets should be proposed by the Executive is that, it is the Executive that knows and defines its policies and projects.

Unfortunately, that has not been given much regard in what has been sent to me. The National Assembly made cuts amounting to N347 billion in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion”.

While the lawmakers had cut down the proposed cost for some executive projects, the president criticized the scrutiny that made provisions of funds for some other new projects included by the National Assembly.

According to the President, “Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation. Some of the new projects inserted by National Assembly have not been properly conceptualized, designed and costed and will therefore be difficult to execute.

Part of the areas the lawmakers had reduced funds included: pensions, construction of terminal at Enugu Airports, fund for the proposed Maritime University in Delta state.

“At a time when we are working with Labour to address compensation-related issues, a total of 5 billion Naira was cut from the provisions for Pension Redemption Fund and Public Service Wage Adjustment.

The provision for Construction of the Terminal Building at Enugu Airport was cut from 2 billion Naira to 500 million Naira, which will further delay the completion of this critical project.

The Take-off Grant for the Maritime University in Delta State, a key strategic initiative of the Federal Government, was cut from 5 billion Naira to 3.4 billion Naira”, Buhari mentioned.

“About seventy (70) new road projects have been inserted into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. In doing so, National Assembly applied some of the additional funds expected from the upward review of the oil price benchmark to the Ministry’s vote.

The provisions for Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and Special Economic Zones/Industrial Parks, which are key industrialization initiatives of this Administration, were cut by a total of 14.5 billion naira ”, Buhari also stated.