CLARICE AZUATALAM, FEMALE JOURNALIST ON RIVERS BUDGET
By Akanimo Sampson
ON the evening of December 24, 2008, just as many people were in a festive mood, the Rivers state Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi rushed to the state house of assembly to present the 2009 Appropriation Bill.
In the budget, he proposed to spend a total sum of N432.2 billion for the current financial year. But what he proposed last year was N280.01 billion and this was presented to the house of assembly in February 2008. This amount he initially proposed was later increased by N97 billion or 34.6 percent when the state legislators eventually passed the appropriation bill of last year. At the end the state government had N377.5 billion in its kitty to spend.
However, looking at the current appropriation bill for the year 2009 the governor sent to the state house of assembly for approval, some financial experts have faulted it saying that “it lacks the standard style of budget preparation.”
For instance, Mr Chinedu Emeh, an economist told The Nation that “starting from the manner the budget was presented to the house of assembly and even the whole budget statement shows that it lacked expert advice.”
Emeh first wondered why the hurry to present the budget on the eve of Christmas and added that “to me the whole budget statement was more of speech-making than making financial statement on how the revenue and expenditure pattern of the state will look like this year.”
The economist also faulted the budget on not reflecting sectoral allocation and what is due to each ministry pointing out that the governor did not also indicate what is to be expended on miscellaneous, which is the standard practice.
Making his own critique, Mr Efegadi Eguzozie, a Port Harcourt based Financial Analyst who also runs a consultancy firm said “first, the budget is not christened anything, which is an indication that it was a job done in a hurry and by people who are not experts in the field.”
Eguzozie also faulted the budget on the grounds that it lacks the three basic ingredients of budget which are: participation, transparency and accountability.
According to him, participation means that all stakeholders like civil societies, women and youth groups ought to have made inputs into the budget, to state what they want or how they want the budget to be.
By transparency, it means that government has to be open on budget issues while accountability makes it imperative for government to give report on performance of the past budget on quarterly, half yearly or end of year basis.
Though the Financial Consultant commended the governor for adding the N104.2 billion unspent fund from the 2008 appropriation bill to the N328 billion( to get the N432.2 billion he proposes to spend this year) but he quickly pointed out that the sources of generating the revenue he proposed to spend this year were not indicated.
The sources, he stated are usually from VAT, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and federal allocation and may be grants.
Eguzozie further disclosed that the state is already experiencing short fall in its IGR since it changed its non- indigenous tax consultant to an indigene of the state. For instance, he said that the IGR for last year stood at N3.25 billion as against N6 billion which it had been receiving before the change.
The amount gulped by each sector, the ministries and their parastatals in the last year’s budget was not indicated in the financial statement sent to the state assembly
He further faulted the 2009 appropriation bill for not giving the detailed performance rating of the last year’s adding that “the whole budget has no focus on what it intends to achieve.”
In addition, the financial expert wondered why the difference between the last year’s recurrent expenditure and that of this year has to be only 2percent increase. That is, recurrent expenditure for 2009 is N90.6 or 21 percent of the total estimate for the year while that of last year had N53.408 billion or 19.07 percent of what was proposed for that period.
He also raised eyebrow on the difference between what was budgeted for capital projects last year and that of the current year. For last year, the amount expended on capital projects was N226.672 or 80.93 percent while that of this year is N341.6 billion or 79 percent of the total estimated for 2009. This, he noted has a slight drop of about 2 percent stating that “the whole figures look like they were just juggled to score some points.”
He in addition lamented that since 1999, the Finance Commissioners have not been giving budget break down except in the first year of Dr Peter Odili’s administration stressing that “some of these things I have pointed out to you are the reasons for budget apathy because the bill is presented in a way that is not really understood by the people.”
On the process which the state house of assembly would
use to pass the bill, Eguzozie said that“I cannot
really say much on that because there seems to be
an “understanding” between the executive and legislature
in this aspect. I know for sure that the bill will
eventually be passed as presented or even increased.”
In his own comments, Mr Nsirimovu Anyakwee,a strong
human rights activist in the state said it was to
early to comment on the budget since the state
legislators have not commenced debate on it but
he observed that “the Legislators which since 1999 have been mere rubber stampers, rather than effective representatives of the people with quality oversight capacity, should this time turn a positive page in
their assignment, so that history can judge them well.
“After the Constitution of the land, the budget is
probably the next
most important document that affects
the lives and welbeings of citizens and must not be taken lightly.”
“It is important that Legislators not be in a hurry but extremely meticulous in their examination of the budget to ensure that fictitious allocations are
not made, and or money requested or allocated to work already done, especially in the area of construction
works.”
The human rights activist further urged the legislators to attune themselves to budget implementation process in order to make a difference in the lives of those
they purport to represent adding that the budget is for Rivers people and “the word of the executive alone must not be taken for
granted.
While urging the legislators to “shine their eyes”
in passing the budget Anyakwee stated that“inspite of the size of the budget last year, we still have a situation where the outcome still falls
well short of expectation to put it mildly.”
However, efforts made to get Mr George Feyii, the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning whose ministry prepared the budget to defend the government’s stand on this financial statement proved abortive as refused to pick his calls.#
