The Federal Government has declared that the delay in release of capital votes for capital projects in the N6.06trillion 2016 budget is due to procurement procedure and low level of revenue generation.

Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, said yesterday to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, that the procurement procedure problem arose from the six months requirement for procurement process as provided for in the Public Procurement Act.

According to Udoma, “no new project is ripe for any capital releases because of the six months of procurement process including advertising and so on. It is only existing projects, which already met the criteria for the various procurement stages that are qualified for capital releases.”

On the problem of low revenue, he said the overall revenue for the first quarter, was about 55 percent of the projected revenue expectations which according to him, was caused by agitation in the Niger Delta by militants and earlier difficulties faced by importers in accessing foreign exchange.

“The bulk of the problem of low revenue generation came from militant agitations in the Niger Delta which affected oil production which prevented us from reaching the 2.2 billion barrel even though the price is going up.

“At a point production went down to one million barrel but right now, we have been informed by the Minister of Petroleum that it is going up again to about N1.9 billion barrel but that, the revenue will come in three months time because the generation of today is not the revenue of today but of three months time,” he said.

He however, assured the committee that many of the new capital projects captured in the budget would be executed, since duration for their implementations has been extended to May next year by the National Assembly, more so, with revenue going up now.

“The National Assembly gave us till May next year to carry out the capital expenditure and we still have 10 months of capital spending to do.