…promises to increase it to N1.1 trillion before end of year
Federal Government on Thursday announced the release of over N820.57 billion to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as capital expenditure from 2018 Budget, saying that it would soon increase it to N1.1 trillion before the end of the year.
Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed who disclosed this, during the 2019 Budget breakdown, in Abuja, said the N820.57 billion represents 43 per cent of the MDA capital.
This was contained in a statement issued by the Minister’s Special Adviser on Media and Communication, Mr Paul Ella Abechi on Thursday.
She explained that the government has equally made releases that go to the statutory transfer agencies which are released to them en block and that amount includes both their personnel, recurrent as well as capital.
“Let me first of all say that the N820.57 billion that has been released is just for MDA capital because we have releases also that go to the statutory transfer agencies that are released to them en block and that amount includes both their personnel, recurrent as well as capital.
“There are also capital releases that are done as part of the capital supplementation. That is to say it’s service wide that is not in the 820.57 billion. The 820.57 billion is 43 per cent of MDA capital. We are working to push this to 1.1trillion by the end of December and that would be including the statutory transfers” she said.
The Minister also explained the reason for the depletion of the Excess Crude Account (ECA) from $2.319 billion as at last month to $631 billion this month, saying that about $1 billion was withdrawn for security purposes.
Similarly, she said, about N50 billion was refunded on Wednesday into the account.
“The excess crude account was refunded yesterday (Wednesday) and we had sent another 50 billion savings into the excess crude account. Recall that NEC had authorised the use of $1billion from the excess crude account for security. So, the performance of that instruction is what has produced what we have in the excess crude account.
“So it’s been largely depleted but we are still saving to it and this is the third month that we have been saving consistently into the excess crude oil account” she said.
