The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday, admonished the federal government to increase efforts in funding the capital components of the three national budgets running concurrently.
The Red Chamber constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate the continued importation of hazardous petroleum products and dumping of substandard diesel in the country.
The chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Solomon Adeola, raised the issue of capital expenditure funding when Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, and Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs Oluwatoyin Madein, appeared before the panel over the budgets’ performance.
Adeola lamented the poor funding of the capital components of the budgets and urged the Coordinating Minister of the Economy to improve on that.
He said, “It is the capital component of the budgets that will showcase this government largely in terms of performances. The capital components tend to showcase various projects that will be executed by this government and people can say, oh, the government is doing this, it’s doing that. That is why we are emphasizing the performance of the 2024 budget capital component. The N1.84 billion achieved so far out of an N9 trillion capital expenditure component is nothing to write home about. I would want you to, please, look towards this direction.”
Adeola enjoined the minister to engage more with the MDAs because most of them were not aware of the current arrangement regarding funding of capital projects.
