The Senate, Tuesday, scored the Ministry of Finance F9, which is WAEC (West Africa Examination Council) standard in budget releases to the Federal Capital Territory, FCT in 2018.
It, according to the assessment, gave the Ministry 31.9 percent for the releases from the N30.4billion that was approved in the budget.
Meanwhile, the Senate, Tuesday, kicked against what it described as yearly drastic reduction in the capital component budgetary allocations to the territory.
Speaking in Abuja when Muhammed Bello, the Minister of the FCT, appeared before the Committee on FCT to defend the 2019 budget, Senator Dino Melaye (PDP Kogi West), Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, said that Capital component of FCT’s budget allocations has plummeted over the years from N109 billion in 2008 to N30 billion in 2019.
He said it was even worrisome that out of the N30.39 billion approved for capital projects in the 2017 budget of the territory, only N12.7 billion was released which was about 40.1 percent.
Melaye, who noted that the declining trend worsened in 2018, when out of the N30.2 billion approved as capital expenditure for the territory, only N9.6 billion was released which was just 31.9 percent, said, “This to us by WAEC standard, is F9 and not acceptable. The trend if not reversed, is a recipe for failure as far as infrastructural development is concerned.”
According to him, the way out of the yearly poor funding of the FCT budget was for government to prioritise its spending by getting more money for FCT to execute its capital projects particularly at the various satellite towns.
