By Sunny Anderson Osiebe..
The
Presidency on Thursday commended the Senate President, Dr. Abubakar
Bukola Saraki. for initiating the reform of the nation's budgeting
process. It said the
executive fully supports the move.
Minister
of Budget and National Planning, Mr. Udoma Udo Udoma, according to a
statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the Senate President, Sanni
Onogu, disclosed
this during the formal presentation of the report of the Technical
Committee on the Budget Reform Process in Nigeria, inaugurated by the
Senate President on July 25, 2016.
"This
initiative of Your Excellency, the Senate President, is an initiative
that has the full support of the executive," Udoma said. "We believe
that the budget
and the budget process is something that we have to work on together
closely and collaboratively.
"Consequently,
your initiative to look at the reform of the process is an initiative
that we welcome and which was why the Director General of the Budget
Office,
with my authority, participated fully in the deliberations.
"As
the Senate Leader indicated, the success of any budget depends on very
close collaboration between the executive and the legislature. I believe
that this
process that you have embarked on and the reforms will help to smoothen
some of the issues that arise from time to time when we are considering
the budget," he said.
In
his remarks after receiving the report from the Chairman of the
Technical Committee and Leader of the Senate, Senator Ali Ndume, the
Senate President, Dr.
Abubakar Bukola Saraki, described the report as one of the most
important exercises of the Senate so far, while commending the Committee
for complying with the stipulated time frame for the exercise.
Saraki
also commended the Minister of Budget and National Planning for his
participation in the processes that led to the report, saying, "I think
as a country,
what we are doing today is long overdue for us to have reviewed the
budget process. I think we are truly building a solid foundation for the
years ahead.
"I agree that the recommendations require the review of certain laws, but I think there are some of them that have to do with processes.
I think we can immediately begin to implement those that have to do with processes.
"As we all know, for many years, this has been an area of acrimony and disaffection between the two arms of government which is mainly
due to ambiguities in some of the laws and processes," Saraki said.
The
Senate President specifically noted the recommendation in the report
dealing with pre-budget participation of the public in the process as he
said "there
is really very little participation of the public in the process".
"We
have public hearings on so many things but the most important law that
we have to pass, has very little participation of the public. I am
happy it was captured
in this report that even when we do the review of the budget, the
public should also participate," he stated.
Earlier,
Senator Ndume noted that the low development indicators and lackluster
performance of the economy in general are not unconnected with
inefficient and
ineffective public financial management and budgeting in particular.
He
noted that the broad objective of the exercise is to address the
pitfalls and challenges in the budget process and significantly improve
formulation, enactment,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation with a view
to improving budget performance and development outcomes.
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