The Buhari administration has said its over N13 trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal year, will remain unchanged despite the economy currently in recession.
This was disclosed by the minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“We are not planning to retrieve the budget or to reverse it beyond the work of appropriation that the National Assembly is currently doing in consultation with us,” she said.
Ahmed assured that Nigeria would soon exit the recession given the speedy implementation of the Economic Sustainability Plan, ESP, which she said was introduced as part of measures by the federal government to cushion unforeseen economic crises like the recession.
On issues of federal workers’ salary, the minister said, “There is no issue with federal workers’ salary. We have paid salaries for November and we shall pay salaries for December so there is no issue at all with salary.
“If you hear about any issue, it is for agencies whose budgets funding on the GIFMIS (Government Integrated Financial Management and Information System) system was exhausted and we are about to make an adjustment to them.
“When we were doing the 2020 budget, we made estimates of the consequential adjustment that is required as a result of the minimum wage and we had sent the budget before a decision and approval was taken on the consequential adjustment, so it is anticipated that some agencies might run short and we made a block provision in the service-wide vote of the budget.
“So, when we have such a situation, what we simply do is remove funds from the service-wide vote to the agency so that they pay their budget, there is no problem of payment of salaries at all,” she stated.