By Eze Okechukwu, Abuja

The National Assembly has expressed serious concern over the huge discrepancies in the size of the Recurrent Expenditure relative to Capital Expenditure and the low level of fund releases for capital projects for Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs in the 2024 Budget that is ongoing.

In a Joint Sitting of the Chairmen of Senate and House Committees on Appropriations and the Presidential Economic Team on consideration of the 2025 Appropriation Bill, Senator Solomon Adeola and Honourable Abubakar Birchi, chairmen of Senate and House Committees respectively, agreed that the economic team should do something urgent to release more funds for capital projects as this is a major way for the people to feel the impact of government away from recurrent expenditure which affects only a negligible part of the population. The position of the National Assembly followed the report of the economic team led by Mr. Wale Edun, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy showing that overall so far 2024 budget performance was 43% with Recurrent expenditure achieving 100% while capital budget only managed 25% performance.Senator Adeola said he was an advocate of drastically reducing the ratio of recurrent expenditure to capital in the budget from the present level of about 80% for recurrent and 20% for capital to at least 60% to 40% stressing that capital projects in the budget and their implementation is a major spur for economic growth and direct impact on the people.“Capital releases to MDAs are the major drivers of economic activities within the nation. Non release of funds for capital projects is a major issue in the performance of 2024 Budget so far and it is desirable that funds are released to prevent abandoned projects and ensure the success of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the president,” he stated.Senator Adeola said it will not be cheery news for MDAs to come for their 2025 budget defense with record of non-performance of their core mandates as contained in capital budget stressing that within the period of the 2024 budget still running, effort should be made by Finance Ministry to release funds for capital projects.Concurring with his counterpart in the Senate, Hon. Birchi called for more releases for capital projects of MDAs for such projects as schools, roads, dams, hospitals and other social infrastructure instead of such items as debt repayment which he argued can be restructured in the interim.“Most of the items of recurrent expenditure which takes a huge part of our budget and is implemented 100% will only directly affect about 10% of our population while capital projects of the MDAs will directly affect majority of over 200 million Nigerians in areas of social infrastructures provisions like hospitals, schools, roads, energy and similar” he stated.The Minister of Finance confirmed that they have outstanding capital releases awaiting funding regretting however that the country cannot go back on the old ways of spending money that is not there to avoid backlash as happened in France and Germany of recent adding that there are warrants awaiting payment for capital projects.Also throwing light on the issue, the Minister of Budget and Planning, Alhaji Abubakar Bagudu said the huge recurrent expenditure in our budgets is a function of our level of development and some of the societal challenges we are facing at this moment adding that some of the recurrent goes into the campaign of the military against insecurity which is yielding results to spur agricultural production and economic activities.The Director General of Budget Office, Dr. Tanimu Yakubu also attributed the huge recurrent expenditure to past legacies inherited by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in areas like unpaid pensions and gratuities which the administration has successfully addressed stressing that in the future there may be need for legislation by the National Assembly to limit the size of recurrent expenditure in the budget.The meeting which had in attendance the Minister of State for Finance Dr, Doris Uzoka-Anite and the permanent secretaries of Ministries of Finance and Ministry of Budget and National Planning also deliberated on the issues of waivers and tax holidays which seems to reduce revenues for the government.