Budget 2016, a priority, says Udo Udoma

Minister pledges proper planning as institute tasks govt on fiscal discipline
Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma yesterday in Abuja stressed that the days of budgeting without planning and due checks are over for good, promising to expedite work on the pending 2016 budget as a matter of national urgency.

Udoma, who stated this as he resumed office, maintained that the 2016 budget is the priority of his ministry because a lot depended on it, especially in view of the anxious international community and the Nigerian business climate.
“The new ministerial team have reported for duty and are ready to work. People are waiting for us. We are coming to work; we have no time to waste. We have a budget that has to be finalized. We are coming for action,” he reassured.

Speaking also on the budget, the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed said that henceforth, “our budget will be driven with the plan behind it. Each budget area will be linked to a strategic goal that has been predefined by the plan put together.”
“I am glad that the administration is not looking at doing a new strategic plan because there are so many good plans that we have already, all we need is this very approach.”

Meanwhile, the Institute of Fiscal Studies [IFS] has said that the ongoing fiscal crisis requires some immediate, short, and long-term policy measures as well as responses, capable of bringing Nigeria’s economy back on track.

peaking with newsmen in Abuja yesterday, the Director-General of the Institute, Mr. Godwin Ighedosa said government should close down all unnecessary intervention programmes and palliative measures that have created opportunities in the past for rent-seeking and corruption in public services such as subsidy for petroleum products, SURE-P programme as well as the proposed free feeding of school children by the government.