CMD BOSS LISTS BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE BUDGETING, TRAINING

THE Director-General, Centre for Management Development, Dr. Usman Kabo, has advised heads of establishments to give priority attention to effective budgeting and training in order to achieve enhanced productivity.

Kabo said at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria on Monday in Abuja that it was the responsibility of chief executives to prioritise the modality that would ensure effective budgeting and the training of workforce.

According to him, most people in leadership positions, in both the public and the private sectors of the economy, had not achieved much because of the obvious loopholes in their budgets.

Kabo explained that the centre was keenly monitoring the country's work ethos with a view to correcting it.

He added that the centre was established to train people in economic as well as management development.

The director-general said that sufficient exposure of managers or would-be managers to the requisite training was the antidote to the culture of mismanagement and waste.

According to him, such training when obtained with commitment, will go a long way in promoting accountability and transparency.

'The Centre for Management Development is actually not well known; it is not well understood; it is not well patronised. The reason is simple: because people do not understand its value,' he said.

Kabo said the centre had inherited the Centre for Economic Management and Administration for greater impact, adding that in 2004 the centre merged with the Centre for Nigeria Council for Economic and Management Administration for better service delivery.

According to him, a new act is in the offing to strengthen the centre, he said.

'We are trying to place the issue of training back on the agenda; the function of CMD is that we train, we research, and we consult.

'One other element is that we network because we have to facilitate opportunities for sharing and dissemination of the best practices between the public sector and the private sector,'' Kabo said.

The director-general stated that CMD had afforded substantial number of resource persons, managers, as well as consultants, resulting in workable synergy in the management of resources.

He explained that the critical aspect of the CMD's mandate in terms of quality assurance was in the area of granting accreditation, registration of training institutions, as well as to produce directorates of all resource persons in the country.

He stated that the greatest responsibility placed on the centre was the mandate to monitor, assess and evaluate the economic management and administrative capacity of the country.

On corruption, Kabo said that with persistent patronage of the centre which teaches both academic and attitudinal training, managers would begin to appreciate transparency and accountability in the handling of public funds.

He, however, stated that the agency required improved budget allocation in order to carry out these functions to their optimal level.