OUR BUDGETING SYSTEM, A FAILURE –MARK

…says it hasn’t brought democracy dividends

Senate President David Mark yesterday picked holes in the country’s budgeting system, saying that Nigerians had not benefitted from the yearly ritual.

This is even as the senators commenced moves to scrap the envelope-based budgeting system, which confines Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, to pre-determined amount by the Budget Office and the Finance Ministry.

“I think that there is basically a problem with the envelope system and that has to change.

“Our budgets over the years have not brought growth, it has not improved employment rate, it has not brought the dividends of democracy to the people as they expected and I think that is not in the best interest of this country.

“The problem is that people who are in charge of the budget have failed to do what they are supposed to do.

“Some others have become too powerful and hijacked other people’s work and refuse to allow those who have been charged with specific responsibility to do what they are supposed to do,” Mark said.

The senators expressed concern that the current annual incremental envelope- based budgeting being used by the Federal Ministry of Finance was arbitrary and not pro-growth, stressing that it was one of the factors responsible for the slow shift from recurrent to capital-led annual budget.

The lawmakers, therefore, directed the Senate Joint Committee on National Planning and Finance to commence the immediate review of the current national planning and budgeting linkages and recommend amendments to the relevant laws.

The senators’ action followed the adoption of the resolution of the motion sponsored by Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi (Ekiti North) on the review of the national planning and budgeting system in the country.

All the senators who contributed to the motion aligned with the view that the envelope-based budgeting system had failed the country as it had not ensured the delivery of democracy dividends to the people.

They also agreed that the budgeting process had made the legislature less involved, relying only on the information provided by the executive.

The lawmakers noted that the parliament “is the constitutional institution that should appropriate national budget.” They, however, regretted that under the current arrangements, there “is an absence of a coherent and systematic means of exerting legislative control over the fiscal priorities of the Federal Government.”

Adetunmbi in his lead motion noted the subsumed role of the national planning functions in the Nigerian budget process. While insisting that national planning continues to be a dominant policy instrument in many low-income and emerging market economies, the lawmaker explained that the traditional five-year development plans had been replaced by a medium-term expenditure framework.

He expressed concern that Nigeria needed evidencebased budgeting “rooted in planning that is based on demographic information from a credible census and reliable socio-economic data from the national and state statistical bureaux.

The lawmaker also noted that the country needed a strong national planning function “to provide a multiyear national plan and undertake the necessary analysis of alternative planning scenarios, policies and strategies and bring together the line ministries, the private and voluntary sectors as well as the international community into an effective development partnership.”

Source: National Mirror