….Also N17Bn USP Fund
The Senate has approved N549.6 billion budget for the Nigerian Communications commission (NCC) in 2024 fiscal year, and N17 billion for the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF).
The Red Chamber approved the budget on Thursday during the plenary session following the presentation of the Senate Committee on Communications’ report.
The Chairman of the Committee on Communications, Sen. Bilbis Aliyu, while giving the breakdown of the commission’s total expenditure for the year 2024, disclosed that N155 billion would be for recurrent expenditure and N18 billion proposed as capital expenditure.
Giving a summary of the framework of the NCC for 2024 Senator Aliyu said “the sum of N66.7 billion is for special intervention project, while the sum of N17 billion will be transferred to Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF). The sum of N332.8 billion will be transferred to federal government of Nigeria.
“The recurrent expenditure of N155 billion consist of salaries and wages, spectrums and regulatory expenses and professional fees. Capital expenditure of N18 billion consists of the commissions internal project which is carefully selected to boost it revenue potentials and replace obsolete fixed assets”, the lawmaker added.
During the deliberations on the committee’s report, many lawmakers agreed that there was the need to support the commission with more funds in view of its current drives to enhance telecommunications services in the country.
The USPF is an agency under the NCC saddled with the responsibility of promoting widespread availability and usage of network services and applications services throughout Nigeria to institutions, unserved, under-served areas or for under-served groups within the communities in the country.
It would be recalled that the committee had earlier appraised the performance of NCC’s 2023 budget which was recently presented by the Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Commission, Dr. Aminu Maida.
The 2023 budget performance report indicated that the commission generated an actual revenue of N448.1 billion, representing a shortfall from the N559.080 billion target, with total recurrent expenditure at N67.072 billion and capital expenditure at N3.6 billion.
