Markets analyst with TTAC, Tunji Andrew, says Nigeria’s 2014 budget has signs that the “nation is filling holes with earth from a new pit,” as freed key recurrent expenditure in 2014 is tied to new recurrent expenditure.
He explained that Wages and Bills in the 2014 budget is about 1.72 trillion Naira up from 1 trillion Naira in 2013, despite the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. “We should have a lower wage bill in 2014,” he said.
“With close inspection, you will realise that the Federal Government created new Ministries Departments and Agencies in 2014. So, there has been a huge factor of recurrent expenditure going up to about 3.5 trillion Naira in 2014 up from 3 trillion Naira in 2013.”
He said that it would have been expected that the government would go into aggressive capital expenditure, creating key infrastructure to push growth and create jobs through foreign direct investments, which he stressed would only come when the infrastructure need to make business thrive in Nigeria was in place.
“The government seems to believe it want to go on the path of using policies and recurrent expenditure and there seems to be lack of will to be able to create key civil service reform.
“We have an over-bloated civil service that is gulping 1.7 trillion Naira on a yearly basis and the government seems not to be able to do anything about it. We need to look at those books,” Mr Andrew Said.
He, however, explained that the budget was a more prudent one as it was less than that of 2013 by 29 billion dollars, but insisted that the reduction in the allocations to some government ministries should have been channelled into capital expenditure to ensure that the budget, christened ‘Budget of Job Creation And Inclusive Growth’ would create the expected jobs and inspire the needed growth.