INDICATIONS emerged yesterday that the House of Representatives would adopt the N6.08 trillion size of the 2016 budget.
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Dr. Abdulmumini Jibrin, who spoke to reporters at the National Assembly complex, Abuja, said that the decision was taken to avoid friction between the legislature and the executive arm of government.

He also assured that both the House of Representatives and it’s Senate counterpart would abide by the February 25th deadline for the passage of the budget based on the directives of the Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki.

Acknowledging that the $38 budget benchmark was unrealistic in view of the drastic fall in the price of oil in the international market, the lawmaker disclosed that the House would engage the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the issue of budget deficit financing to push for external borrowing instead of domestic borrowing.

Lauding the resolve by the government to fund the budget mainly from proceeds from non-oil revenues, he stated that the entire House committees working on the budget estimate would definitely operate within the envelop allocated to ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

Jibrin, who assured that the House would not condone any attempt by the MDAs to pad the budget, stated that the House would explore the possibility of cutting down recurrent and personnel cost in favour of the capital component of the budget.

Expressing the desire by the House to cut down the yearly N1 trillion cash call production cost borne in the oil and gas sector of the economy, he said: “Of course as you all know that the budget size is N6 trillion. First we are actually concerned because we are not too celebrating that the budget is N6 trillion because what we would have loved to see is for the recurrent expenditures to be reduced and that portion that would be reduced from the recurrent expenditure is added to the capital component. But what we have now at the moment is that the recurrent is increasing and the capital is increasing concurrently. It is not what we would love to see.

“Secondly, there is the aspect of the personnel. Of course you know that the government long time ago introduced the Integrated Personnel System (IPS). Till date, just only about 20 per cent of the government personnel are captured. So the way the government is committed to the TSA policy, the executive arm should also ensure that the IPS should be able to capture 100 per cent of the government employees. With that, we are confident we should be able to significantly reduce the personnel cost.

“And of course the aspect of the overhead. The aspects being repeated as some agencies do like in the case of procurement of computers for five years running. And several other overheads, which we would make sure we reduce in the budget.

“One very important aspect that keep recurring is the cash call production cost. Many people take their eyes away from production cost but it is critical. Every year, we pay an average of N1 trillion as cost of production. It is important that this time around we have to sit with the relevant agencies in the oil and gas sector to see the details of this production cost and ensure that the country is not just shortchanged. We can’t just be mopping a lot of money from first line charge and give to our foreign partners.”