The Federal Government has halted further releases for 2019 capital projects to prepare for the implementation of the 2020 budget starting next month.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed made this disclosure in Abuja yesterday at the public presentation breakdown of the 2020 budget.
According to Ahmed, “we have been able to release N1.2 trillion, we will not be making any more releases before the end of the year. We are not doing any more releases. However, there are some in various stages of processing that would be completed. The 2020 budget takes effect from January 1 2020.”
Defending the 2019 capital releases, Zainab Ahmed noted that in releasing funding for capital projects, priority was given to critical ongoing projects in rail, roads, power and agriculture sectors while debt service and the implementation of non-debt recurrent expenditure, particularly payment of workers’ salaries and pensions will continue.
On the Finance Bill and the requirement of Tax Identification Number (TIN) to operate a bank account, Zainab Ahmed said not all the provisions of the bill would be implemented from January 1, 2020 while the government would engage banks on the modality for implementation of TIN requirement.
Giving that the Finance Bill has about 83 modifications, meant to improve the business environment especially for small and medium enterprises, Ahmed noted that “Until the finance bill is assented into law, the measures we are taking are just plans for now. We are confident that within this week, Mr President will have this bill from the National Assembly and he will normally ask various ministries to review and advise him before he signs.”
Speaking on the 2020 budget, the finance minister stated that the federal government will commence from January 1, 2020 a seamless and effective budget delivery, by releasing guidelines for the implementation of the budget.
She noted that the projected N8.42 trillion revenue is 3.2 per cent or N263.94 billion over the executive proposal, and 10.9 per cent more than the 2019 Budget of N7.59 trillion) .
To promote fiscal transparency and accountability, the budget of 10 major Government-Owned Enterprises (GOEs) have been integrated in the Federal Government budget with effect from 2020.
She noted that 44 per cent of projected revenues will come from oil-related sources while 56 per cent will come from non-oil sources, stressing that, the size of the budget has been constrained by relatively low revenues.
When asked if the government is not bothered about the rate at which Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing below population growth rate, she stated that the government was doing all it could to boost growth rate to seven per cent.
