Akwa Ibom government defends budget size, plans tax summit

The Akwa Ibom State government has said that insinuations by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the state that the 2018 budget is bloated and over-ambitious was misleading, considering the current exchange rate of the country’s currency against the dollars.

The state Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Linus Nkan, stated this yesterday while fielding questions from journalists in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital.An Uyo-based NGO in a statement had alleged that the state’s 2018 budget proposal of N651.5 billion was the most bloated budget in the history of the state and demanded that it should be reduced because the performance of the capital budget in the past years had been unimpressive.

Nkan, who explained the rationale behind the so-called bloated budget, said that exchange rate was important in determining the budget size, adding that while last year’s budget was based on an exchange rate of N196 to the dollar, the 2018 budget is pegged on an exchange rate of N305 to a dollar.

He, therefore, noted that the assertion was baseless and without any foundation.He said: “The NGO did not state the basis of its suggestion because the budget size of Akwa Ibom State for both 2017 and 2018 has different benchmarks.

“The benchmark of 2017 budget was based on the exchange rate of N196 to a dollar but this time around, we are talking about N305 per dollar.“In Nigeria, everything is subjected to the dollar. If we actually wanted to compare the size of last year’s budget and this year’s budget in dollars, the 2018 budget is smaller than that of 2017. The budget is an estimate, you give yourself some allowance.”

According to him, the debt the current administration inherited from the previous government was not anything significant, saying however that, borrowing to fund development projects was not against any financial regulation when the borrowed funds are deployed into the implementation of life-touching projects.

Meanwhile, the commissioner has stated that the state is planning for tax summit in 2018 so as to seek the opinion of tax experts on how to improve the current revenue level and ensure that its contribution is substantial.“We are planning a tax workshop to call on stakeholders and experts to give us suggestions. Our IGR is very poor,” he said.