Senate Committee Chairman on Appropriation, Senator Jibrin Barau has stated that government Ministries, Departments and Agencies have enjoyed prompt release of recurrent and capital overhead funds this year.
He ruled out non-releases by the Federal Ministry of Finance as challenges confronting government parastatals, adding that his Committee has been monitoring the release of funds and he can effectively say, the Ministry has done well.
According to him, he has chaired Committee on Appropriation at the lower legislative Chambers years back, but what he is seeing showed that the present administration was doing well enough in the release of funds, notwithstanding that some parastatals would have to fulfill procurement requirements in order to access funds.
The lawmaker stated this at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Thursday, when he was asked to clarify on complaints in some quarters that the Federal Ministry of Finance was not releasing funds for government agencies.
In his reaction, he said: “I don’t think that’s correct as far as I know of capital releases to Ministries, Agencies and Department of Government. The Federal Ministry of Finance has done very well in prompt release of funds for execution of capital projects.
“They are doing very well, but the problem lies with some agencies of government that were yet to conclude procurement processes for execution of capital projects. As far as I know as the Snate Committee Chairman on Appropriation, there is so much money in accounts of some MDAs.
“In respect to implementation of the 2021 by the various agencies that have appeared before the various Committees so far, I think there was no problem so far. There’s also no problem accessing funds already released and anything contrary is not correct.
“I want to recall that the budget performance for last year was 100 hundred percent and this year, from what the Committee on Appropriation has discovered, they are doing well such that by December when the lifespan of the 2021 would expire, they would have had 100% performance too.
“I was chairing this Committee between 1999 to 2003 and I know the difference between now and then, it hadn’t been so good like this.”
Meanwhile, the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan had on Wednesday announced that agencies of government have only one week to finalize their budget defence.
Lawan stated at the close of plenary, saying that any Ministry that fails to defend its budget within one week would not have opportunity to do so anymore.
