The Federal Government has urged states to strengthen budget planning and execution as they prepare their 2027 budgets, with emphasis on aligning spending with development priorities and available resources.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Dr Deborah Odoh, said credible budgets must reflect government priorities and the activities planned to achieve them.
Speaking at a three-day technical capacity building workshop on Disbursement Linked Indicator (DLI) 2 of the Human Capital Opportunities for Prosperity and Equity Governance Programme (HOPE-GOV) in Abuja on Monday, Odoh said planning must be linked to budgeting to improve the use of public resources.
"A credible budget should be the financial expression of government priorities and the activities intended to achieve them," she said.
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She said the workshop would enable state teams to review their annual operational plans, annual consolidated work plans and budget documents, identify gaps in costing and expenditure classification, and reconcile planned activities with available resources and budget ceilings.
Odoh said the objective was to strengthen the capacity of state institutions to prepare and execute their budgets, rather than have federal officials or technical experts prepare them on their behalf.
The Executive Director of Programmes and Partnerships at the Nigeria Governors' Forum (NGF) Secretariat, represented by Senior Health Specialist Dr Chinekwu Oreh, said states were expected to base their approved budgets for basic education and primary healthcare on their annual consolidated work plans and execute the budgets within stipulated performance limits.
"Put simply, DLI 2 rewards States whose budgets reflect their plans, and whose spending reflects their budgets," the representative said.
The NGF Secretariat, she said, would continue to support states through technical assistance and peer learning to improve budget credibility, strengthen execution and publish timely and transparent fiscal information.
She added that lessons from the Year Zero verification exercise had highlighted areas requiring improvement as states prepare their 2027 budgets.
National Coordinator of the HOPE-GOV Programme, Dr Assad Hassan, said increasing expenditure alone would not guarantee better public services without improvements in planning, budgeting, execution and accountability systems.
"We are here to move from plans to priorities, from priorities to budgets, and from budgets to results," Hassan said.
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He said the workshop would focus on aligning annual operational plans, annual consolidated work plans and 2027 budgets, applying the National Chart of Accounts and programme based budgeting, and prioritising, costing, mapping and geo-tagging projects.
