Leadership (Abuja)
Osunde Adesuwa
13 January 2009
Abuja — Finance Minister Mansur Mukhtar yesterday admitted that the ministry of finance and other ministries and agencies of government performed below expectations, in spite of early release of funds to service the budget in 2008.
Although, the minister has assured that ministry and other stakeholders "were still determining the actual percentage of the 2008 budget that was unutilised by ministries and agencies of government.
Muktar made the disclosure at a budget assessment session of the 2008 and 2009 budget defence before the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
He also said even President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua expressed displeasure with the performance of the budget.
The minister said, "I agree with you totally that the ministry of finance did not perform in 2008, even though the money was released to us. Even yesterday we had a four-and-a-half hour meeting with the President over this. The President is not happy that ministries are returning monies to the treasury.
"Now look at the phase II building of the ministry of finance (that is to gulp N750million), it is there, it is not something that you would say you need help or a feasibility study. It is just to renovate it", he remarked.
The committee however expressed dismay at the return of about N750million allocated to the Ministry for the completion of the phase II of the Ministry's headquarters located at Cadastral zone of the Federal Capital Territory, noting that the money has now been returned to the treasury as unspent, even though there were no impediments to its disbursement, with the work needed to be done still pending.
Responding to the observation, Dr. Mukhtar, agreed with the committee that it had received a 100 percent release of what was due to the ministry in 2008 in due time, but failed to utilise it fully before the end of the year.
Earlier, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon. John Enoh and other members of the Committee took turns to dissect the Ministry's proposal for 2009 which stands at N1.6trillion for recurrent expenditure.
While assessing the 2009 budget proposal, members of the committee faulted N250million subhead projected for "International Travels" and "Capacity Building", noting that they were unnecessary in the face of the global financial downturn threat.
The Committee advised the supervisory Ministry to live up to its role and prevail on other ministries to embrace 'austerity measures' in handling the 2009 budget, while warning that unless it was convinced beyond reasonable doubt, it would not approve another sum of N1.3billion for "rehabilitation" of the ministry's buildings.
It also queried recurring subheads like "Information Technology Automation" cost and some miscellaneous that were not implemented. The ministry is proposing N80million for IT automation which is expected to provide conference IT service for all its departments.
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