The Nation Newspaper Experts chart ways to make 2024 budget effective
As the nation awaits the this month’s ending target for the unveiling of the 2024 budget, experts have called for a review of the budgeting process to make it more effective and inclusive.administration, urging the new government to avoid several pitfalls that had caused the previous budgets to fail in achieving optimal goals.
“Beyond the broad line of macroeconomic variables, a glance at the Nigerian budget reveals an aggregation of projects that lacks coherence and compatibility with the national strategy. The budget must be an annual resource plan to deliver a nation’s coordinated vision; it must be self-evident in its line items and ensure this fits into grand ideas to deliver sustainable growth.
They noted that the exclusion of the National Assembly gives the legislators opportunity to drastically alter the appropriation bill in the process of inserting their constituency projects. “Nigeria’s infrastructure and human development needs cannot be addressed by anything less than successive fiscal years of significant spending. The federal budget has had a growing recurrent expenditure profile but, interestingly, a relatively static capital expenditure profile within the past eight years. While actual recurrent debt expenditure grew from N1.060 trillion in 2015 to N4.22 trillion in 2021, actual Capital expenditure barely changed, moving from N601.27 billion in 2015 to N1.
Experts pointed out that budgeting over the years has been gender unintentional; arguing that for a country striving towards achieving development goals, gender equity is a cross-cutting factor influencing each of the 17 sustainable development goals and can only be achieved through gender-responsive governance and gender-responsive budgeting .
“Over the years, budget padding has synced deep into the country’s budgetary process, and as such, unethically exaggerated expenses or allocations have resulted in resource misallocation, wastage, and a decline in public confidence. With our assessment of the last three Appropriation Bills and Acts of the 2021 and 2022 financial years, we’ve been able to outline the unruly insertions of over N1.8 trillion by the National Assembly during this timeline.
According to experts, over the years, Nigeria’s budget has witnessed the allocation of projects to agencies outside the scope of their authority, which often leads to the majority of the projects not being completed. BudgIT also called for end to delayed budget cycle with a view to strengthening accountability and transparency through timeliness.
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