2011 budget: FG jacks up State House, SGF’s recurrent expenditure by N16.3bn

Despite the Federal Government‘s pledge to slash recurrent expenditure across board in 2011, the State House and the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation will spend more funds on overhead and other non-capital projects next year.

The recurrent budget of the State House and the SGF‘s office will rise by N16.3bn in 2011 above this year‘s figures.

A breakdown of the 2011 budget estimates, which Sunday PUNCH obtained, showed that the Presidency would spend N26.6bn next year on recurrent services.

This proposal is higher than the N22bn approved for the office in the 2010 Appropriation Act by N4.6bn.

Similarly, the SGF‘s office, which got N45.9bn in the 2010 Appropriation Act, has been earmarked N57.6bn for its recurrent spending in 2011.

The proposal is higher than that of 2010 by N11.7bn.

The State House is also to execute capital projects worth about N13bn next year, while similar projects in the SGF‘s office are expected to gulp N6bn.

The details of the projects were not provided in the executive summary of the budget, which our correspondent obtained on Friday.

But, compared to the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, the proposal for the SGF‘s office is low. The former has a provision of N153.3bn for recurrent spending in 2011.

The Office of the National Security Adviser has N50.8bn proposed for it as recurrent spending.

Salaries of policemen and overhead for police formations and commands in the country will gulp N293.5bn next year.

The Ministry of Petroleum Resources has a provision of N38.4bn for recurrent services.

The ministries of works and science/technology have N26.6bn and N22.4bn respectively as recurrent proposals.

President Goodluck Jonathan had last Wednesday, presented a budget proposal of N4.22trn to a joint session of the National Assembly for the 2011 fiscal year.

Of the figure, the lion‘s share of N2.48trn was allocated to recurrent expenditure, while capital expenditure had a provision of N1.005trn.

Roughly N542.38bn was set aside for debt service, while N196.11bn was for statutory transfers.

Incidentally, the government is targeting a revenue of N2.8trn, leaving a huge deficit in the budget.

Daily oil production was put at 2.3million barrel, with a benchmark price of $65 per barrel.

The exchange rate was fixed at N150 to $1, while the projected Gross Domestic Product growth rate was put at seven per cent.

Source:Punch