The presidency has ruled out the possibility of full implementation of the budget as requested by the House of Representatives.
It however claimed on Wednesday in Abuja that 56% of the budget has been implemented with about N404billion cash released while cashed back is in the sum of 324billion.
The budget signed into law on the15th March was N4.69trillion.
The Presidency also gave hint that the third quarter fund will be released within the next two weeks.
The Presidency also blamed the slow implementation of the budget on the constituency projects inserted into the original bill sent to the National Assembly for consideration as it requires the ministries to commence fresh procurement process which is procedural.
Besides the Presidency noted that budget is a process with a life cycle of a whole year and that there is nowhere in the world where budget has ever been fully implemented.
The House of Representatives last Thursday issued an ultimatum to President Goodluck Jonathan to fully implement the budget 100% by September failure to which an impeachment process will begin on him.
But the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said it is a tall order to implement the budget 100% in September.
She however noted that the President is determined to implement the 2012 budget as fully as possible and by extension will be moving towards the figure of full implementation.
Okonjo who spoke to State House Correspondents alongside Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, Director General of Bureau for Public Procurement, Engr. Emeka Eze and Director General of Budget, Dr. Bridgt Okongu noted that there has been a lot of improvement in the implementation of the budget, citing the 39% recorded for the month of May to 56% by mid July.
According to her, “In terms of 100% implementation, I think that what I read that was said by sections of the National Assembly, will have to do 100% implementation of the budget by September.
"First in my experience worldwide there is hardly any country where you would implement 100% even by the end of the year and this is based on very broad experience.
“But people try to get at least to 80% to 90% of the budget, as much as can be done. 100% by September, you know September is the ninth month of the year, so we will definitely be moving towards the figure.
“I think the point is that Mr President is determined to implement this budget as fully as possible and therefore we will be moving towards the figure of as full implementation as we can by the end of the year because the budget was made for the whole year.
“So you can see that there is no lack of effort, no lack of goodwill. If we could go from 39% in May to 56% by mid July that shows a considerable leap and I'm quite confident that as we go month by month both the us and the National Assembly will be able to look at it and say yes a good effort has been made for the country.”
Stressing that the presidency has been working closely with the National Assembly on the budget, the minister said, “I really think we need to focus on the joint endeavor that we have with the national assembly which is that we are both interested in the same thing , the proper implementatin of the budget for the benefit of the Nigerian people and there is absolutely no controversy about that.
“Am sure that as the figures of the utilization of budget and implementation are made known and as the National Assembly members get more of this information that the meeting of minds will become even more. We shared earlier on, we have been very open and transparent about the information we have , the shared with them the tables showing where we where in terms of end of May and am sure that as they get the information as at July 20 which is 56% they will see that we are very much working to the same purpose on the same page.”
Okonjo-Iweala also noted that the review of the implementation level of the budget by the executive which has seen three ministers, Police Affairs, Interior and Agriculture appearing before the President to state key indicator performance of their ministries was to be able to keep tap on what have been achieved.
“We have had a pattern of reviewing implementation of the budget with Mr. President, who has been very insistent that we do this. We have been meeting and discussing this on a monthly basis and so we did our usual monthly discussions to see where we are.
We have been working quite collaboratively with the National Assembly on the budget. We have met with the various committees of both the House and the Senate and we appreciate the cooperation that we have from them in trying to get this budget and also been working to implementation.
“Let me stress that the objective of Mr. President and that of the executives is very much the same as that of the National Assembly, which is to ensure that there s budget execution in order to deliver on the development programmes for this country. “To that effect, we have really been working hard to try and get this done and I think the proof that the attention the President has been giving to these issues s bearing fruit is the fact that from the review we had last month where implementation and utilisation of resources was at 39%, we are now at 56%. So we have moved from 39% as at the end of May to 56% as at July 20.
“So I think that is a very good progress and we expect to see continuing progress in that particular area.
“As you know we have released about 404billion so far, cashed back 324billion and the utilisation of that is 56%. We will soon be considering the release of the third quarter funds, we hope to do that within the next two weeks or so.
“We do face a couple of challenges that we have also been working with the National Assembly on, effectively and quietly we have been working with them on a couple of these challenges. The first is of course many of the constituency projects and new projects put into the budget needs to be designed and to have feasibility studies because there are new and of course this takes a little bit of time to get those in time before MDAs can actually begin the process of procurement which also takes time.
To follow the law and you follow the way that the projects are implemented that takes a little bit of time to get the design of a new project, to get the feasibility study and so on. We are very committed to getting this project done, you can't really lung into the implementation of a project before you have a feasibility study.
“Second is that there are some moves within the budget, during the time that the budget was considered by the National Assembly at the time the committed were considering, they did move some resources from one category to the other in comparison to what the executives had presented.And we have been working with them quietly and effectively to try and make sure that those resources are moved into areas where ministers can actually implement.
“We hope that the good cooperation we have had with the National Assembly will continue in rectifying some of these moves which you find in the budget because it will also enable MDAs to implement the budget a bit faster.”
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