SGF appears before Senate to defend budget

SGF appears before Senate to defend budget

Babachir Lawal, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) yesterday appeared before the Senate to defend the 2017 budget proposals for his office.

SGF appears before Senate to defend budget
SGF appears before Senate to defend budget

Mr Lawal told senators that his office had a proposal of N9.882,782,935 billion to be spent this year.

According to a report by Vanguard newspaper, the SGF said N400 million was proposed for the purchase of vehicles for former Presidents since their vehicles were usually due for change at the end of four years.

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He said his office also budgeted N2,692,391,118 for capital projects for the 2017, lamenting that funds appropriated to the office of the SGF in the 2016 budget were grossly inadequate to meet some of the responsibilities of the office.

The SGF said of the amount, N3,408,763,591 was proposed for payment of personnel costs; N3,781,628,226 for overheads, a figure which showed an increase of N2 billion, compared to 2016 appropriation.

On their part, the senators want Finance Ministry, Budget office probed In their separate responses, members of the committee agreed with Mr Lawal that the 10 percent released by the Ministry of Finance to his office in 2016 was insufficient, particularly against the backdrop of what was proposed.

Vice Chairman of the committee, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, while commending the Federal Fovernment for adequate releases to MDAs in 2016, said the committee would investigate the poor release to the OSGF.

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“The capital budget funding of 2016 is phenomenal. In the last 17 years, I have not come across anywhere government has been able to fund adequately the budget of MDAs.

“Something is definitely wrong, and we need to get behind what went wrong. If it is a problem between Finance and Budget, we need to get at it and understand what it is. ‘’It is unlike this government to do that. We need to come down to what went wrong, where, who is in charge of that and re-mediate it,” he said.

Source: Legit.ng

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