The Citizens Wealth Platform, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), on Tuesday called on the Federal Government to concentrate on completing abandoned projects by placing a moratorium on new ones in the 2013 budget.
Eze Onyekpere, budget analyst and co-ordinator of the NGO, made the submission at a consultative forum on the 2013 budget for the organised private sector and civil society.
“Even with the little resources available for capital expenditure, the budget is suffused with thousands of projects which available resources cannot pay for in the medium term,” he said.
“This has led to so many abandoned projects; and projects under the Ministry of Works illustrate this anomalous situation. A presidential committee has identified that over N100 trillion will be needed to complete these projects.”
Onyekpere, therefore, advised government to focus on completing projects that contributed most to government?s policies on poverty reduction, economic growth and improving industrial capacity utilisation.
On poor capital budget implementation, the NGO said government should consider “administrative and penal sanctions against accounting officers who sit on their capital votes for no justifiable reason.”
He suggested that the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) should conduct quarterly budget performance review sessions for ministries, department and agencies (MDAs).
According to him, the sessions should involve detailed review of actual performance, and if there are major deviations, MDAs should be compelled to submit a remediation plan.
The civil society leader also urged government to invest in new refineries in 2013, “even if it means privatising them shortly after they have started full production”.
“The Minister of Trade was celebrating the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the building of modular refineries with combined capacity of 180,000 barrels per day at the cost of N697.85 billion. At this rate, the N2.1 trillion used for fuel subsidy in 2011 can build refineries with daily refining capacity of 540,000 barrels which will be able to satisfy Nigeria?s domestic fuel needs,” he said.
In his remarks, Garba Gusau, the President of the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME), complained that the 2012 budget was not SME friendly.
“In spite of the growth in the SME sector in Nigeria, there remains a remarkable difference in the gains of the sector by states and Federal Government, even though policy statement and pronouncement say otherwise,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the SME sector was not particularly listed as a priority area for deserved allocation, and as such received no special allocation.”
On the associations? expectation for the 2013 budget, Gusau urged government to address the poor infrastructure in the country and provide access to sustainable credits for SMEs.
Ilyas Saleh, the Chairman North-West branch of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), urged the government to do more to curtail smuggling, to ensure proper revenue accruals to the federation.
He lauded the Federal Government?s initiative of providing funds for the rebuilding of the textile industry and provision of working capital to provide employment.
He, however, called for a review of tariffs on imported textiles to enable the local industry to grow.
Earlier, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had assured the forum that the 2013 budget would be sent to the Senate by September.
She said the budget would champion a new approach to rapid economic development based largely on revenue generated from taxes paid by businesses operating profitably in the country.
The theme of the 2013 Budget is “Fiscal Consolidation and Growth”.
