By Dipo Olowookere
The Nigerian government said it would try to mitigate the effects of the delay in the passage of the 2018 appropriation bill presently with the National Assembly.
The budget was submitted to the parliament in November 2017 by President Muhammadu Buhari, but a disagreement between the executive and the legislature, especially with the Senate, has delayed the passage.
Addressing newsmen at a conference in Abuja on Friday after a meeting with World Bank executives, Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, agreed that the delay in passage of the 2018 budget would have some impact on the nation and cause some adjustments in implementation.
Mrs Adeosun explained that the impact was because markets change and the cost of money in the market changes too, but said Federal Government would try to mitigate the effects of the delay.
“Honestly, we may need to realign some of the priorities now because what we thought we would be doing in January is now different from what we are going to do.
“So, we are going to have to look very closely to see where we would realign and re-prioritise, but we will carry on because most of the capital projects are multiyear projects so we will just continue.
“We are going to try and mitigate that impact as much as possible and focus on completing projects,” she said.
Speaking further, the Minister said, “What has helped us is the fact that the budget was passed late last year, and what we did was we just carried on with those projects, we will close this year’s budget with capital expenses in excess of N1.5 trillion which is higher than last year.
“Many of these projects are multiyear projects, so hopefully, there will not be too much disruptions.’’
Mrs Adeosun said that the financial systems were not closed on December 31, 2017 to allow for projects implementation to continue.
She, however, said she was optimistic that the 2018 budget would be passed soon.
