Mr. Tijah Bolton-Akpan, Executive Director, Policy Alert.
Abasifreke Effiong – Uyo
Policy Alert, a non-governmental organisation working on fiscal justice has drawn the attention of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly to “vague, spurious and unmatched” items in the 2021 budget proposed by Akwa Ibom state government.
The NGO in a presentation made by her Executive Director, Mr Tijah Bolton-Akpan, at a public hearing on the 2021 budget of the state pointed out that there are more than 200 vague, spurious and mismatched items in the 2021 budget presented by Governor Udom Emmanuel.
Governor Emmanuel presented a budget of N435.6 billion, comprising N158.4 billion recurrent expenditure, N50.28 consolidated revenue, and N226.96 as capital expenditure, to the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly on Tuesday 20th October.
Policy Alert observed that N100million is budgeted under the Ministry of Special Duties and Aviation Development for the maintenance of a- 21-storey smart building which is still under construction.
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Two other items under the Ministry which raised questions are budget for the purchase of three number concrete moulds at N150 million, and N50 million budgeted for ‘impact mitigation and monitoring’ which was not tied to any project.
It pointed out that N1.08billion is also budgeted for ‘miscellaneous’ expenses under the Ministry of Economic Development and Ibom Deep Seaport.
Under the Ministry of Agriculture, the organisation insisted that it was spurious to budget N52 million for ‘farm road maintenance’ under AK-RAAMP, a project already funded with a N5.95 billion loan.
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Two other vague proposals under the Ministry of Agriculture are, N10 million budget for ‘improving food harvesting and preservation’ and N10 million for ‘ensuring food and nutrition security’.
Under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, N120 million is budgeted for ‘venue, decoration and security’. The amount is not tied to an event or activity in the budget.
Policy Alert has urged the House of Assembly to thoroughly interrogate the 2021 budget from the perspective of price intelligence after observing that prices of products were arbitrarily attached to items in the budget.
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“The entire 2021 budget proposals need to be seriously interrogated from a price intelligence perspective. It is worrisome that prices are arbitrarily allocated to items. For example, in 2019, the SSG’s Office budgeted N755 million for 5 nos. security jeeps in 2020, the cost for the same items came down to N428 million and in 2021 it spiked to almost double at N800 million.”
“In the same vein, N1.65bn budgeted for 10 nos. Prado Jeeps in 2020 by the same MDA became N450 million in the 2021 proposals.”
“In Ministry of Works and Fire Service, we see Fire service proposing N15 million for Hilux van while Central Engineering Workshop is proposing N21 million for the same vehicle. The varied costing for Hilux, Toyota Corolla and Buses cuts across several MDAs.”
“We also saw the maintenance services for Godswill Akpabio Stadium moving from N878 million in 2020 down to N500 million in 2021. This arbitrariness is one of the reasons our budget is not realistic and if we do a serious weeding of this budget we can save billions of naira for the state”, the organisation observed.
However, the organisation has lauded the Akwa Ibom state government for the early presentation of the 2021 budget proposals and thumbed up the macroeconomics fundamentals upon which the budget is laid.
The 2021 budget of the state is predicted on a crude oil benchmark of 1.86 million barrels per day and $40 per barrel at an exchange rate of N379 to a dollar.
Meanwhile, Policy Alert has urged Akwa Ibom state government to initiate a participatory process for developing a Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, for 2022 – 2024 in line with the proposed Fiscal Responsibility Law of the state, stressing that “no meaningful planning and monitoring of economic development can take place without a multi-year plan”.
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