President Umaru Yar’Adua, on Tuesday, at the last Federal Executive Council meeting of the year ordered ministers to suspend further approval of fresh contracts in the 2007 budget.
Yar’Adua gave the directive after some ministers submitted over 30 memos seeking approval of fresh contracts from the 2007 budget at the FEC meeting in the State House, Abuja .
As a result of this development, 27 of such memos had to be withdrawn by the concerned ministers during the meeting.
The President, who frowned at the development, noted that it was improper to approve fresh contracts for 2007 just a few days to the expiration of the 2007 Appropriation Act.
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, disclosed this to newsmen after the meeting, which was carried forward to Tuesday because of the two-day Sallah holidays which begin today.
Usman said that out of a total of 34 memos that were submitted to the FEC for consideration, 30 were for approval of fresh contracts.
He said, “Out of the 34 council papers, about 30 at least were to do with contracts.
“But of those, 27 had to be stepped down because the President and Council felt it is quite inappropriate for the Council to be approving contracts to be drawn out of the 2007 budget when in fact the 2007 budget itself will expire in the next four days, assuming, if the National Assembly approves the budget before the end of the year, then the 2007 Appropriation Act will literally be over.”
Usman further explained that in a move to correct defects in the current federal budgetary practices, Yar’Adua directed that by December 31, all ministries, agencies and parastatals of the Federal Government must return all unspent fund from the budget.
He said, “It was felt that it is really inappropriate to be doing this because it is really not a good budgetary practice, and therefore the emphasis is that we are going back to doing things the correct way, like it was done in the past, which is that as at the end of December 31, all ministries, departments and agencies are going to be asked to return all unspent money from the 2007 budget.
“It is only what is appropriated by the National Assembly in the 2008 budget that is going to be spent in 2008.
“So, we are getting back to the correct way of doing things; to the legal way of doing things; and to the proper budgetary practices that should be observed.
“Also, discussions were held on the plan for next year to improve budgetary performance. We are going to look at all the bottlenecks that exist in the system today, whether it is from the Due Process Office; whether it is from the Accountant-General’s Office, or wherever, whether it is in the MDAs, in the process of getting contract papers.
“We shouldn’t be approving anything for 2007 contracts at this time, only a few days to the end of the year, and I think that point was made very strongly by Mr. President. And in fact, it is the ministers themselves that voluntarily, and actually withdrew the papers that they had submitted for this meeting.”
He said that the FEC planned to institutionalise proper budgetary practices that should ensure earlier and effective implementation of the budget, starting from 2008.
“And we are going to improve the monitoring and implementation of the budget, so that probably by September/October, a large chunk of the budget would have been implemented already, not giving money for projects that we know in reality will not be implemented in the year for which the appropriation was taken,” he said.
By Ihuoma Chiedozie, Abuja
The Punch
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
