*To summon Aganga over alleged unsavoury comments

BY TORDUE SALEM

ABUJA -The Federal Ministry of Finance must implement the 2011 budget to the last kobo, Deputy Leader of the House of Representatives, Rep. Baba Shehu Agaie, charged yesterday.

The Minister of Finance, Mr. Segun Aganga, had on Wednesday, through a statement, said in part: “The budget (2011) is supposed to signal the beginning of fiscal consolidation, but we now have another expansionary budget which is unimplementable.

“If we are to build our economy on a solid foundation and avoid the boom and burst of the past, it is critical that we must embrace discipline in the way we manage public finances. We cannot continue like this.”

But the Deputy Leader of the House in an interview with Vanguard yesterday, said the Minister was merely offering an opinion that could not be backed by action.
 
He said the National Assembly, on return from its election recess, would summon the Minister and prove to the country that the budget was implementable.

“The Finance Minister has no power to say the budget is unimplementable because the National Assembly has passed the budget based on the reserves currently maintained by the government. In passing the budget, we considered the level of our foreign reserves and money realised from crude oil sales in the past few weeks.

“The country is not facing any serious crises as of now to warrant a failure in the implementation of the budget, so the Minister is just expressing an opinion that does not really matter as far as our work on the budget and the reality on the ground are concerned,” he said.

Agaie from Niger State, who said the House and the Senate would return after elections next month to take on the Minister, said: “Nigerians will hear from us when we reconvene next month.”

He said the National Assembly “will prove to Nigerians that the budget can be implemented when we return.”