Okonjo-Iweala in Senate: Nigeria not broke, cash problems normal
Coordinating Minister for the economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
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The
Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Thursday, tried to
douse the controversy set off by the implementation of the budget by the
Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Okonjo-Iweala spoke at the Senate when she appeared before the special joint committee on the performance of the 2012 budget.
Asked if the country was broke, she
said, “The country is absolutely not broke. And I want to repeat that
again, because there are those who would want to push that idea. The
country is not broke, (though) the country may have cash flow problems
from time to time. That is normal and is to be expected because a person
may be very wealthy, he may have a lot of assets but at a particular
point in time the stream of income may delay.
“You are running a business, you can be
assets rich therefore you cannot be broke but you may have a temporary
month when the flow is not as it should be because the price of that
product may be lower. The time for you to collect money from that
product may take a little longer because you extended credit to people
by selling to them and then telling them you will collect later. So,
sometimes there may be temporary cash flow issues, but the country
broke? The answer is no.”
The House of Representatives on July 19
had berated the Federal Government for alleged poor implementation of
the 2012 budget and gave President Goodluck Jonathan a September 18
deadline to achieve 100 per cent performance of the budget or face
impeachment proceedings.
The Senate also on Tuesday had condemned
what it described as the non-impressive execution of the budget and
summoned the finance minister to appear to brief it on the budget
performance on Thursday (yesterday).
Okonjo-Iweala, however, faulted the
claim that the budget performance had been “abysmal.” The minister
explained that her position on the 56 per cent budget performance ratio
was based on funds actually utilised from the releases as of July 2012.
According to Okonjo-Iweala, the 2012
budget implementation actually started in April 2012 and had only been
operated for four months after it was signed into law.
She said, “The first thing to note is
that this year’s budget implementation started in April after the budget
was signed. For the knowledge of all Nigerians, we have been
implementing this budget for just four months, starting from April, and
that is the way we have been following the budget. We talk about the
utilisation of resources since April and from April to July, what have
been released and what has been utilised.
“Out of the total capital budget of
N1.3tn for capital…we have been implementing for four months, we have
released so far, N404bn, we have cash backed N324billion, meaning that
we have actually made cash available to the tune of N324billion for
Ministries, Departments and Agencies to use.
“So out of the amount we have
cash-backed, they have used 56 per cent of the amount we have cash
backed, that is what we talked about.”
She added that the proper way to look at implementation was to consider it in terms of the money spent.
She said, “If you know how much has been
used of the resources that has been released, then you will know how
much more room there is.
“Out of the amount that has been
cash-backed, N324bn, 56 per cent has been used meaning that there is
still 44 per cent of resources not used, so there is room for
implementation to progress. So we are working very hard to ensure that
the 44 per cent is used.”
She denied allegations that the Ministry
of Finance had withheld money from ministries and other government
agencies. She added that the finance ministry had released all the funds
available to it on a quarterly basis, saying that she was not
withholding funds meant for the execution of the projects.
She said, “Since this budget started in
April, how much should we have released from then to July of the N1.3tr
appropriated for capital projects? If we look at that pro-rated for
those four months, N446 bn should have been released for capital, but we
have released 404billion, and you look at the cash-backing, the
utilisation as a percentage of that.
“If we look at that ratio, you will see
that we should have released 446 bn from April to July, we cashed-backed
N324bn; N184bn has been utilised and this gives you, if you want to
look at the execution part of the budget, 41.3 per cent. I have not
talked about budget implementation before, I only spoke about the
utilisation of the resources, but now in terms of the budget, this is
the way we will present it.”
Okonjo-Iweala also appealed to the
lawmakers to “give us up to the end of the year before saying that the
performance of the budget is low.”
She also noted that she had heard that
MDAs were coming to the National Assembly to complain of the non-
release of funds. The minister urged senators to take a look at the
project-by-project releases already published by the ministry to
determine those agencies that had received funds but that had not
utilised the funds.
Earlier, the Leader of the Senate,
Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, representing the President of the Senate,
David Mark, at the session, had said that Nigerians needed to know what
the problem was with budget implementation.
He urged the minister to clarify if the
addition of the constituency projects which amounted to about N60bn were
responsible for the poor implementation of the budget.
Ndoma-Egba noted that the meeting was to
address the concerns of Nigerians who were wont to blame the National
Assembly for “every lapse in budget implementation.”
