Zakari Isah, Kaduna
The Hon Commissioner, of the Planning and Budget Commission, Hon. Muhktar Ahmed has expressed delight over the continued engagement with Civil Society organizations (CSOs), as part of the fiscal conversation for the 2024 budget.
The Commissioner made the remarks during an interactive session with CSOs, the Private Sector, Women Groups, and People Living with Disabilities on the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), held at the Conference Hall, Planning and Budget Commission.
Hon. Muhktar Ahmed explained that the engagement was for the citizens groups to have a look at the MTEF documents, and make inputs, and recommendations to ensure a realistic budget for the 2024 fiscal year, where expected revenues will be generated to implement planned programs and projects.
“The 2024 budget estimates will be based on the MTEF document, as it has greater macroeconomic balance and budgetary predictability for state’s efficient use of public finances”.
Hon Muhktar Ahmed reaffirmed the state government’s continued engagement with CSOs as far as the budget is concerned in the state.
He described MTEF as a “vital requirement” of the Fiscal Responsibility Law 2016, which aimed at strengthening the public financial management systems to ensure transparency, accountability, and improvement of service delivery to citizens.
He added that the MTEF document also aims at improving sectoral resource allocation by effectively prioritizing all expenditures, based on the state’s socio-economic programs as it has historically provided more realistic estimates.
He noted that this year’s budget comes with a lot of challenges ranging from the exchange rate, insecurity, the economic situation of the world, occasioned by the war in Ukraine and other natural disasters, and inflation as a result of the recent removal of fuel subsidies that are likely going to affect revenue allocation to fund the budgets.
Hon Muhktar highlighted some of the measures put in place by Governor Uba Sani-led administration to curb the hardship faced by the Citizens of Kaduna State.
He announced that Kaduna State is the first sub-national in Nigeria to join CoST, Infrastructure Transparency Initiatives, and the sixth in Africa to key into the initiative.
While presenting the draft document for the citizens’ input, the Director of Budget in the commission, Malam Idris Suleiman advised the State House of Assembly to streamline each year’s budget as presented to it by the executive arm, in line with MTEF to have a realistic budget that would increase performance at the end of the day.
He added that the MTEF was developed after an in-depth analysis and proper consultation with the Federal Government – leveraging on income projection from the monthly statutory allocation, value-added tax, internally generated revenue, exchange crude, and other income.
He acknowledged that each year, the MTEF has provided a more realistic estimate of revenues than the annual budget.
“The State had in 2014 prepared its first-ever MTEF which covered the period of 2016-2018. It has been doing that including the very current one covering 2024-2026”.
In attendance were civil society groups including the Kaduna Social Protection Accountability Coalition, Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism, Civil-Sciety Scaling Up Nutrition In Nigeria, OGP, Local Government Accountability Mechanism, and other relevant stakeholders.
Some of the CSOs’ representatives described the presentation as commendable but observed that internal revenue projection should be realistic to be able to fund some significant part of the fiscal estimates.
Don't change... ensuring is better in this context.
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