Onwuka Nzeshi
12 December 2008
Abuja — The House of Representatives Committee on Finance yesterday said it was prepared to ensure an early passage and full implementation of the 2009 Budget. But the committee said the austerity measures embedded in the document should be brought to bear on all facets of governance including the semi-autonomous revenue generating agencies.
It said the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance was already making inquiries into the finances and expenditures of some agencies and corporations including the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).
The move, according to the committee, is to ensure that they comply strictly with the spirit of the 2009 Budget in terms of prudence and remittance of surplus revenue to the Federation Account.
In the 2009 Budget, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua had embraced measures aimed at drastically reducing government expenses such as putting a ceiling on buying new vehicles and cutting down on travels and duty tour allowances.
National Assembly Joint Committees on Finance and Appropriation were earlier reported to have listed 10 conditions for the passage of the budget, which included the fact that the Executive must keep faith with the provisions of the document.
This latest move to entrench probity and accountability in budget implementation came even as the same committee raised questions on the continued inclusion of the Joint Venture Cash Calls in the budget.
According to the committee, the standard practice elsewhere in the world is for the national oil company such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to fund such expenses.
Chairman, House Committee on Finance, Hon. John Enoh, disclosed these at a media chat in Abuja.
Enoh said given the "huge deficit" in the budget and the dwindling fortunes from the petroleum sector, the National Assembly had a responsibility to track every revenue accruing to the Federal Government from various sources in order to be able to bridge the funding gap in the budget.
He said in subsequent weeks when these agencies appear before the Joint Committee on Finance to defend their budget proposals, the lawmakers would not only be interested in their revenue projections for 2009 but would scrutinise their proposed expenditure to ensure that they are in line with the prudent measures stipulated in the budget.
Eno said: "What we are saying is that in the 2009 Budget estimates, the Executive has come up with quite some measures which are regarded as austerity measures. It said that no new vehicles will be bought; no new buildings or offices will be bought or built; there is a cap on recurrent expenditure and that monies that have been devoted in the past to trainings overseas be cut by about half so that most of those trainings can take place in Nigeria.
"These agencies that are not part of the budget, what are they doing? They are still part of the federation so we can not be having a different kind of requirement for Ministries, Depar-tments and Agencies (MDAs) because they are part of the budget and other agencies that have been set up with government money are left free to run in whatever manner that they choose.
"So what we are saying is that they should submit to us revenue estimates as well as expenditure; we should be able to also advise and say this kind of expenditure will not fly for the year 2009. In doing so we expect that the surpluses that are going to be declared at the end of the year will be much more than it would have been if we allow them to just go and spend their money the way they intend to spend them."
The committee chairman stated that the Joint Venture Cash Calls amounting to $5billion in the budget was abnormal going by global best practices.
He explained that in other oil-producing countries, the cash calls is not made a component in terms of expenditure in the national budget.
He, however, lamented that in Nigeria, cash calls used in funding oil exploration and production activities is not only part of the federal budget but takes a large chunk of the budget.
Meanwhile, opposition parties in the House have dissociated themselves from what they called hasty passage of the budget.
They said the National Assembly needed some time to scrutinise and fine-tune the budget proposals before passing the appropriation bill into law.
House Minority Whip, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, who made the views of the minority parties known yesterday, said it was unfortunate that a budget that took the Executive several months to prepare was now being pushed down the throat of the Legislature.
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