The President, in separate
letters to Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and Speaker, House of Representatives,
Yakubu Dogara, requested for approval to vire N180 billion of the N500
billion appropriated for Special Intervention Programme as in 2016 budget, to
enable the government finance other key projects.
President Muhammadu Buhari,
yesterday, sought the approval of the National Assembly for external borrowing
plan of $29.960 billion to execute key infrastructure projects across the
country between 2016 and 2018.
The two letters,
titled, Request for Virement of Funds
Appropriated for Special Intervention (Recurrent) and Special Intervention
(Capital) for the funding of critical recurrent and capital items and Request for Approval of Federal Government
2016 – 2018 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan, were read on the floors of both
chambers yesterday. According to him,” The total cost of the projects and
programmes under the borrowing (rolling) plan is $29.960 billion, made up of
proposed projects and programmes loan of $11.274 billion, Special National
Infrastructure projects $10.686 billion, Euro bonds of $4.5 billion and Federal
Government budget support of $3.5billion. “
The President, who also
explained that the loan was very necessary, in view of the serious
infrastructure deficit in the country, said:
“Considering the huge infrastructure deficit currently being experienced
in the country and the enormous financial resources required to fill the gap,
in the face of dwindling resources and the inability of our annual budgetary
provisions to bridge the deficit, it has become necessary to resort to prudent
external borrowing to bridge the financing gap, which will largely be applied
to key infrastructure projects, namely power, railway and road projects, among
others.”
He said the N180 billion
virement would be moved from monies already appropriated for special
intervention programmes, both recurrent and capital, for funding of critical
recurrent and capital items. The President added that the request came up
because of shortfalls in provisions for personnel costs; inadequate provision,
ab initio, for some items like the amnesty programme; continuing requirements to
sustain the war against insurgency; and depreciation of the Naira.
The projects to be financed
with the N180.839 billion include the Amnesty programme, National Youth Serve
Corps, NYSC, and the Public Service Wage Adjustment, PSWA. President Buhari
explained that external borrowing plan would be targeted at projects which cut
across all sectors, with special emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture,
health, education , water supply, among others. According to the letter which
was read at the Senate by the Deputy President of Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, who
presided over the session, the Amnesty Programme will get a total sum of N35
billion from the transfer.
It added that the total
recurrent expenditure requirement to be transferred was N166,630,886,954, while
the capital expenditure requirement to be transferred was N14,208,367,476″ A
breakdown of the specific areas the N180.9 billion would be transferred to
showed that Public Service Wage Adjustment takes the lion share of
N71,800,215,270; followed by the Amnesty Programme, which took N35billion while
the mobilisation of corps members received N19,792,018,400.
Others are: Foreign
Missions which gulped N14,667,230,014; Operation Lafiya Dole takes
N13,933,093,000; Nigerian Air Force takes N12,708,367,476; Internal Operations
of the Armed Forces takes N5,205,930,270; Margin for Increase in Cost takes
N2billion, while Presidential Initiative for the North East received
N1.5billion.
No comments:
Post a Comment