FG yet to spend N2.18 trillion from 2018 budget- Udoma

Ebun Francis|

The minister of budget and national planning, Udo Udoma on Tuesday said the federal government is yet to spend N2.18 trillion from the 2018 budget.

According to him, the government has so far spent only N6.938 trillion of the budget and that the budget performance stood at about 75 percent.

The minister made the disclosure while presenting the 2019 budget in Abuja.

He said, “Of the total appropriation of N9.12 trillion, N6.938 trillion was spent. This represents 79% performance.”

“Debt service and the implementation of non-debt recurrent expenditure, notably payment of workers’ salaries and pensions, were on track.”

He also disclosed that the federal government missed its revenue generation targets for 2018 by 45 percent.

He continued, “As at the end of the year, Federal Government’s actual aggregate revenue was N3.96 trillion, which is 55 percent of the budget, although higher than 2017 revenue.”

According to Udoma, the government generated oil revenue of “N2.32 trillion (77% of budget and 64% higher than 2017); Company Income Tax (CIT) of N637.25 billion (80% of budget and 17% higher than 2017); Value-Added Tax (VAT) of N148.92 billion (72% of budget and 15% higher than 2017); Customs Collections of N303.91 billion (94% of budget and 16% higher than 2017)”

He equally disclosed that “independent revenues of N454.34 billion (54% of budget and 54% higher than 2017)” was recorded.

“The overall revenue performance is only 55 percent of the target in the 2018 Budget partly because some one-off items such as the N710 billion from Oil Joint Venture Asset restructuring and N320 billion from revision of the Oil Production Sharing Contract legislation/terms are yet to be actualized and have thus been rolled over to 2019,” he said.