Capital expenditure consumes ₦2.24 trillion off 2017 budget

The newly approved 2017 budget has projected capital expenditure at ₦2.24 trillion, while total Federal Government of Nigeria expenditure stood at ₦7.44 trillion, report on the budget released on Monday showed.

The FBN Capital report with the theme: Go out and spend it, said · the challenge, once the president has signed off the budget, becomes how to make the capital releases as soon as possible, while bettering the record of past administrations for delivering value for monies spent.

It said a breakdown of the ministry’s total of ₦1.2 trillion for 2016 shows that the power, works and housing ministry was the largest beneficiary, receiving ₦0.31 trillion.

It said the priority also showed up in the 2017 budget, in which the same ministry is set to receive ₦0.55 trillion.

The report said that: “From the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) Economic Report for January, we see that the non-debt and debt elements of recurrent expenditure in the month totaled ₦175 billion and ₦157 billion respectively. Once we make allowances for overheads and other recurrent items, it appears that the FGN was on track in its determination to hold personnel costs at around ₦1.8 trillion annually,” it said.

The National Assembly had last week, passed the 2017 Appropriation Bill of ₦7.441 trillion, which represented an increase of ₦143 billion from what was presented last December by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The increase in expenditure came with a significant mark up in the benchmark crude oil price to $44.5 per barrel from the ₦42.5 per barrel proposed by the President. However, the National Assembly maintained the proposed daily crude oil production of 2.2 million barrels, and exchange rate of ₦305 to dollar.

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