Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Beta Edu, has raised the alarm that there was no vote for humanitarian and poverty eradication trust fund in the Ministry's 2024 budget.
She noted that the amount allocated to the ministry in the 2024 budget was not capable of fighting poverty in the country.
Speaking, yesterday, in Abuja, when she led officials of her ministry and parastalas under it, to defend her 2024 budget before the Joint National Assembly Committee on Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, chaired by Senator Idiat Adebule, the Minister stressed that the ministry was given an overhead ceiling of N532.5billion, which represents a 28 percent increase over the 2023 budget to cushion the effects of inflation.
She said: ''It is pertinent to note that the 28 percent increase in the overhead ceiling is not comensurate to the 27.33 percent inflationary rate in the economy today.
Conversely, the capital budget ceiling was reduced from N3.7billion in 2022 to N1.3283billion in 2023 and it represents 71 percent reduction. So, in the 2022 and 2023 there was a 71 percent reduction.
