The federal government will be unable to deliver on some capital projects contained in 2017 budget because of current oil prices and production levels.
Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, Nigeria’s minister of state for Petroleum Resources while addressing Journalists on Wednesday noted that the federal ministry of finance is working round the close to find ways of bridging the gap.
According to Kachikwu, “In terms of the budget impact, definitely, I mean, it is predicated on the number of 2.2 million barrels per day and a price index of 42.50 dollars. Within the price cap, I think we’re still reasonably within range.”
“Obviously we have lost quite a lot of months, some months, at least, two or three in which we did not produce what the budget had projected, so there is definitely going to be differential.
”Like you know, the Ministry of Finance is aggressively looking for ways to cover some of these shortfalls; part of that is efficiency, how do we cut down our expenditure?
“Obviously, certain capital items will be affected; if we do not have money, we cannot do certain capital projects that we have in the budget.
”There is no gainsaying the fact that budget will be impacted but we are working hard with the Federal Executive Council to see how we can forecast or predict that sort of impact and see how we can recover”.