Senate Queries Kemi Adeosun Over 2017 Budget Implementation

The Senate, on Tuesday, challenged Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, over the Federal Government’s insistence on passing the 2018 budget in January when less than 50 percent of the 2017 budget was implemented.
The upper chamber also queried why the 2017 budget had no correlation to the 2018 budget, insisting that going by the implementation, the 2018 budget, if passed by January, would be poor because of the size of Nigeria.
John Eno, Chairman Senate Committee on Finance, made the position known during the budget defence of the Ministry.
Eno asked to know how the Ministry achieved 64 percent budget performance in 2017 when other ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) were nearly scratching below 40 percent.
Responding, Adeosun said the Ministry was working to raise all the MDAs to 50 percent performance before the end of the year.
On leakages in Federal Government earnings, she said the Ministry would look into other agencies, outside the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), that could augment earnings as pointed out.
“We have taken on board some of key reform initiatives. A total of N306 billion is expected from privatisation and N5 billion from sale of other government’s property to finance the deficit,” she said.
The Minister said the revenue targeted for 2017 was largely achieved, with a record of 64 percent performance adding that oil revenue would contribute 37 percent of the total revenue of N6.6 trillion for the 2018 budget.
Other revenue generation areas according to the Minister are recovered looted funds, 7.8 percent; tax amnesty, 1.3 percent; signature bonus, 1.7 per cent; joint venture equity restructuring, 10.7 percent; grants and donors funding, 3 percent and others, 5.5 percent.