The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Jibrin Barau (Kano North, APC), has expressed satisfaction on the submission made by the minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed over alleged insertions in the 2023 budget of some ministries, Agencies and MDAs.
According to Barau, the clarifications made by the Minister were well understood by all the committee members and commended her for ensuring transparency with capturing of loans and grants in the budget.
Recall some heads of agencies said they were not aware of certain budgetary provisions during budget defence with relevant Senate committees.
Senator Bara’u spoke on Monday shortly after the minister of finance appeared before the committtee over alleged padding of the 2023 budget.
He said “There is no controversy, this matter for us, what is provided for in the budget we know there is nothing that has been done wrong. But we decided to call the minister of finance for the sake of allowing the public to understand to hear from her.
“We have studied the entire document and we saw there is nothing wrong in the document, we are really impress the way the budgetary process has been conducted since the inception of this administration, particularly from 2019 to date. Because there is more transparency in the entire process.
“Before now loans were not dipicted in the budget and as I speak loans and grants are now dipicted, before now they were not dipicted, but to allow for transparency, accountability they are now dipicted” Barau said.
The minister had earlier in her submissions to the committee said the various sums some heads of agencies complain of during their meeting with relevant committees for budget defence, were approved by the Federal Executive Council ( FEC).
Specifically, she said “all the proposed budgetary sums like the N206billion in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, the N8.6billion in the Ministry of Defence, N195.468billion in the estimates for the Ministry of Power among others were all captured before presentation by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Most of these sums are bilateral or multilateral loans captured in the budget of agencies selected for projects execution for sole purpose of transparency .
“The totality of such loans captured in the proposed budget of the relevant agencies is N1.771trillion” she said.
Meanwhile, Senator Barau added that all the committees have submitted their reports, saying “we are now working, analysing their reports to make sure they are in conformity with the guidelines that have been set up”.
