The Senate President, Bukola Saraki has said that for the 2016 budget of President Muhammadu Buhari to be realistic and successful, emphasis should be placed on the non-oil and independent revenue generating sources.
Saraki, said this while speaking with a cross section of newsmen after commissioning the newly upgraded and refurbished senate press centre at the National Assembly in Abuja.
Noting that the 2016 budget proposal was ambitious, Saraki maintained that it could only be achieved if all that was necessary to make it work was put in place.
He stated that the 8th Senate would focus its attention on the revenue generating areas and ensure that all leakages were blocked.
Saraki, while speaking on how achievable the 2016 budget is, in view of the dwindling price of crude oil at the international market, said, “I think this is one of the reasons we are having the MDAs defend their proposals before the committees to be able to test some of the scenarios and some of the assumptions, particularly on the revenue side.
“If you look at the revenue, out of about N3.8trillion, N3trillion is coming from non-oil and independent revenue.
“The success of the budget, in my own view, is less on the benchmark. It is more on those two items, non-oil revenue and independent revenue, and that is why we directed our Committee on Finance and other relevant Committees to really scrutinize the revenue side.
“Even the Senate leadership intends to also engage with the ministries as well to really check those two lines, because that is really where the questions come on whether it is achievable. Before we put our signature to it, we need to be sure that those funds are there.
“I believe they are ambitious but it is a good sign, because it begins to make us less dependent on oil… because if N830billion is coming from oil revenue and it is only 23%, even if the price of oil goes down or up, we are not really so much vulnerable than the time when oil revenue was accounting for 70 of our revenue. From that point of view, I believe that once we can do that, it is achievable.”
Saraki also enjoined the executive to put in place modalities that will aid the implementation of the budget since the National Assembly was working to pass it in record time.
Disclosing that the National Assembly would soon amend the Public Procurement Act to ensure quick implementation of the budget, the Senate President noted, “But are also talking about being achievable or implementable, already, some of the things we are going to look at and which we are going to advise the executive on is that while we are working on the budget now, they too should also start making a plan on how to implement the budget because what tends to happen is that even after we have passed a budget, the administration or its bureaucracy sometimes makes the budget difficult to be realizable.
“And two areas: one is looking at the procurement process and it is very likely that we will need to come out with an amendment bill as regards to certain areas of the procurement law. That is something that we are likely to come out with very soon. People are looking at that now to see again how we can assist the executive to see that the budget is implementable.”
Join our twitter community :
