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The former Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman has called for close collaboration between the executive and legislature to address the issue of lag in budget implementation.
Usman who made the call at the 2018 budget seminar organized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), tagged the ‘Nigerian Capital Market and Budget 2017: Lessons for 2018’ said one of the major problems in budget is the lag between budget presentation by the executives and approval by the National Assembly.
“We need to build institutions that will address this issue of lag, for the legislature, they need to establish budget office like it is done in other countries and for the executive, there is need for early and constant engagement with the National Assembly. Executive and legislature need to have a long term agreement on how to get done seamlessly. We need to sing from the same hymn book,” he said.
Assessing the 2018 budget, the Managing Director, Financial Derivative Company Limited, Mr. Bismarck Rewane said the budget was not an expansionary one as regards exchange rate adding that it was also silence on oil subsidy and minimum wage.
“The question is who gets dollar at $305? Every day we are running away with multiple exchange rate which brings about distortion. We are concerned on the budget’s silence on oil subsidy and minimum wage. The stimulus we want to see is not realistic. What happens to the differential of exchange rate of $305 and $360?,” he queried.
To a Professor of Economics, University of Lagos (Unilag), Professor Ndubuisi Nwokeoma “It is an ambitious budget and I don’t think we can achieve the oil benchmark if issue of avengers are not addressed. I wonder what magic we need to perform. The borrowing is also high. Over the years we have distorted the budget cycle. It affects the impact of budget when we don’t have stable cycle,” he said.
