The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation, Mr Abdulmumini Jibrin, said the Lower Chamber would not allow items that had already been captured in previous budgets to be repeated in the 2016 Budget.
Jibrin told newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday that the House was determined to ensure that the country’s budget was not overstuffed.
According to him, various agencies keep repeating same items over the years.
“You will see an agency bringing in purchase of 50 computers and that keeps on repeating itself for five years and more.
“We are talking about the overheads, transport, workshop, training and others. All these items are what we are going to look deeply into, to reduce them.
“We are expecting that the executive should take deliberate measures to ensure that all these items are being reduced in order not to increase the capital budget,’’ he said.
Jibrin said that the value of the capital budget would not be seen so long as the recurrent keeps on increasing.
He expressed concern that the recurrent expenditure in the 2016 budget was increasing concurrently while the capital budget was decreasing.
“What we would have loved to see is for the recurrent expenditure to be reduced and that portion that is reduced from the recurrent expenditure is added to the capital component.
“But what we have at the moment is that recurrent is increasing and capital is decreasing concurrently; it is not what we love to see,’’ Jibrin said.
He urged the Federal Government to ensure that all government workers were captured in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) as a means of blocking financial leakages.
He said that only 20 per cent of the Federal Government personnel was captured in the system.
“So, the way the government pursued the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy, the executive should also ensure that the IPPIS programme captures 100 per cent of the Federal Government employees.
“With that, we are confident that we will be able to significantly reduce the personnel cost,’’ he said.
Jibrin said attention would be focused on examining details of the production cost of oil, adding that it had received less attention in the past.
“It is important that this time around we have to sit down with relevant authorities in the oil and gas sector to see the details of the production cost to ensure that Nigerians are not shortchanged,’’ he said.
