There are strong indications that the Federal Government surpassed previous years’ capital budget implementation in 2017 as reports indicated that it achieved about 73.5 percent of the capital expenditure for the year.
In the year under review, a total of N2.029 trillion was allocated to capital projects, excluding FGN Special Intervention Projects, out of which a total sum of N1.491 trillion had been released to Ministries, Departments and Agencies as at May 28, representing 73.522 per cent implementation.
As expected, the unspent N538 billion would be carried over to the 2018 fiscal year effective from the date the President assents to the N9.12 trillion budget transmitted by the National Assembly to the Presidency last Friday.
An analysis of the Capex releases for the year under review, showed that Ministry of Power, Works And Housing, got N506.935 billion or 77.98 percent out of its budgetary allocation of N650.074 billion; Transportation received N125.974 billion, representing about 52.12 percent of its N241.709 billion allocation, Defence got N149.79 billion or 55.26 percent of its total budgetary allocation of N271.09 billion.
The ministries of Health and Education received N81.46 billion which represented 72.24 per cent of N112.77 billion allocated in the budget while the ministries of Water Resources and Agriculture got N129.66 billion, representing 62.31 percent of N208.099 billion earmarked for projects in the ministries.
Ministry of Justice and social capital projects got N26.060 billion or 59.44 percent out of N43.84 billion allocated in the budget, compared to the N130.568 billion released for administration projects out of N136.585 billion allocated in the budget.
According to official sources, the capital vote utilization in the MDAs could not achieve 100 percent utilization due to sundry factors, including the late passage of the 2017 Appropriation Act which led to the extension of the implementation of the 2016 capital budget to May last year, revenue shortfall and increasing non-discretionary expenditures of government.
Available statistics from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation on the performance of the Capex in the year under review as at the end of Q3, 2017 showed that only N377.02 billion was released and cash backed to MDAs for projects and programmes.
In the preceding quarter, total Capex releases to the MDAs stood at N96.35 billion under the 2016 budget while N59. 45 billion was expended under the 2016 budget during the first half of 2017 on capital projects.
It would be recalled that National Assembly passed the N7.44 trillion Appropriation Bill in May 2017. The Bill provided for N2.987 trillion recurrent (non-debt) expenditure and N2.177 trillion capital expenditure, inclusive of the N150 billion for FGN Special Intervention Programme.
