2011 BUDGET: HARD TIMES AWAIT MINISTERS, DGs OVER IMPLEMENTATION

Mr. Olusegun Aganga
Hard times await ministers and directors general in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) if any one of them fails to implement the 2011 budget faithfully, as the government said it was going to asses their performance based on the implementation of 2011 budget.

The warning, according to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Olusegun Aganga became necessary following the performance based approach the Federal Government said it was going to deploy in the evaluation of 2011 budget implementation.

Aganga, making some clarifications on the 2011 appropriation bill yesterday in Abuja stated that henceforth, the government would not tolerate haphazard implementation of the budget.

He said the Federal Government had disclosed that any minister or director general found wanting in the implementation of the budget would be sanctioned while incentives await any minister or director generals who implement the budget satisfactorily.

Mr. Aganga, who said the 2011 budget was based on fiscal prudence, disclosed that the aggregate expenditure in the 2011 budget had been reduced by 18.1 per cent from N5,1597 trillion in 2010 to N4.26 trillion in 2011.

Despite absorbing the full impact of the increase in salaries by 53 per cent in July 2010, the minister said the government had reduced the non-debt recurrent expenditure by 7.02 per cent to N2,4817 trillion.

He said overheads had been cut from N536 billion to N381 billion, a reduction of 20 per cent.

On employment creation, the minister, who disclosed that about 4,300 jobs would soon be created, said a new national job creation sceme with initial seed funding of N50 billion had been created in addition to a local content requirement for all procurement contracts submitted by MDAs to the Federal Exectutive Council.

The minister, also stated that the government had evolved a new approach to close its infrastructural gap with three potential sources of funding which are the private sector, and the public private partnership arrangements.