By Emmanuel Elebeke

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma has made a passionate appeal to the National Assembly to work hard and ensure that 30 per cent of the 2016 budgetary provision is committed to capital projects and avoid the 2015 budgetary mistake of committing only 10 per cent to that component.

The Minister made the appeal when his ministry appeared before the Joint Houses of the National Assembly to defend its ministry’s 2016 budget proposals.
He emphasized the need for the National Assembly to heed to his plea to enable the present administration address most of the economic and infrastructural challenges confronting the nation.

“We are in a challenging time, we want to use the 2016 budget as solutions to our economic problems, especially the 30 per cent capital allocation component in the budget, we want to move from the past administration’s faulty traditional ways of managing our economy without development strides”

Responding on the fate of 2016 budget in the face of present fall in oil prices, Udoma said, “we are working hard to expand fully the nation’s revenues base away from oil base, government has set achievable targets to all revenues generating agencies, we must collect all revenues that is due and increase tax coverage areas. We have set Treasury Single Account that is blocking corruption loopholes and checking revenue leakages”

Also on the capital budget increament, the Minister of state for Budget and National Planning, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed further noted that ‘a reasonable and sizeable increase in Capital allocation for improvement and provision of key infrastructure is required to reflate the economy and help the productive sector to grow our economy, especially the small scale enterprises.

Responding, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Budget, Planning and Economic Affairs, Senator Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, assured that his Committee will do justice on the budget and will also ensure that every naira budgeted will be utilized for the benefit of all Nigerians.