PDP scribe faults 2016 budget as insensitive, grandstanding

… Budget realistic, responsive, APC BoT member

THE 2016 budget recently presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari has been described as ‘grand-standing’ and ‘unrealistic.’

A member of Goodluck/Sambo Presidential Campaign Committee in the 2015 general election and former Publicity Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano, Jaafar Sani Bello made the observation during an interview with The Guardian, in Kano.

This view was however rejected by a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Board of Trustees and a former member House of Representatives, from Jigawa State, Honourable Nasiru Garba Dantiye, who said he was optimistic that the budget would turn around many things for better in the country during the fiscal year.

Bello claimed that there was nothing contained in the budget that could ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians insisting: “We are at a point of having dwindling revenues. The price of oil at the global market, which is the major source of revenue, has dropped drastically. “

He observed that the budget was based on the benchmark of $38 per barrel and the price of crude oil stands at $31 per barrel, querying, “Then how is this budget going to be realistic? How is this budget going to be financed?

But Dantiye dismissed it saying that, even if one of the major factors of financing items of the budget drops that could not in any way make the document unrealistic.

“When you look at it critically just see that a little above a trillion naira will come from the Federation Account, another a little above a trillion naira is coming from reforms that are made possible by the government in terms of collecting the actual revenues and also look at the proceeds coming from the looters of our economy, “ Dantiye encouraged.

Dantiye gave five conditions upon which President Buhari’s budget indicated that there could light at the end of the tunnel. “When revenues are collected as and when due, with utmost accountability, strict adherence to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, if the government sets eyes on all the revenues coming, when government puts a stop on inflating of government projects and when duplication of government projects are stopped, then there is every possibility that the budget could achieve a lot,” he explained.

He that if government could address the above identified conditions then “the budget implementation will definitely be more than that of the last administration that was having the price of oil at $110 per barrel.”

Bello however decried the situation where “The federal government has earmarked to borrow over a third of the resources to finance the budget. It therefore means that Nigerians would be indebted to the tune of N6bn everyday, in order for the government to finance the budget.”

“We now have a government that is supposed to be downsizing, that is supposed to be right-sizing recurrent expenditure. But this government has chosen to out-spend the previous government in areas where it can cut expenditures.

“Such as feeding in the Presidential Villa. The previous administration in 2015 had budgeted N1b for feeding in the Villa. This administration is budgeting N1.7b to feed the Villa. This does not show the feeling that the present administration is in tune with the present realities, “

The PDP Scribe warned Nigerians to buckle-up “as the Minister of Finance has said and as the President has said, for a tougher 2016,” insisting that, when his party was in power, so many APC top shots including the present President, Buhari, had cried aloud about the massive number of fleets that the Presidency maintained.”

“We had 11 jets in the Presidential fleet. I thought that the most reasonable thing for us to do with the dwindling state that our income is in, was to cut the size of the Presidential fleet by at east 50 percent,” Bello argued.

Contrary to Bello’s criticism, Dantiye argued that, “About N1.8tr is expected as both domestic and foreign loans. Domestic borrowing will be N984b and foreign borrowing stands at N900b. There is nothing to worry about this, because there is no country in the world that operates without borrowing. “

According to him the loans to be collected and with anticipation of all the monies coming, the loan would not be more than two percent of the GDP of the country.

“I am telling you if the government can pursue the recovery of stolen money and if it can pursue all the revenues diligently and transparently, properly remitted and if the government can adhere to the provisions of Fiscal Responsibility Act, I am telling you that the government can get more than a trillion naira, above the expected N850b that is expected from oil revenue source,” Dantiye opined.