Kaduna Mobilizes Citizens’ Support For 2024-2026 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework
Kaduna Mobilizes Citizens’ Support For 2024-2026 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework
By: Femi Mustapha
In its commitment to Open Government practices, Kaduna state has mobilized citizens’ contribution to the 2024-2026 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
Presenting the 2024-2026 MTEF in Kaduna on Thursday, Director for Budget in the Planning and Budget Commission, Idris Suleiman, said the benefits of the MTEF are to provide a backward-looking summary of key economic and fiscal trends that will affect public expenditure in the future, i.e., Economic and Fiscal Update.
He added that it is to set medium-term fiscal objectives and targets, including tax policy; revenue mobilization; the level of public expenditure; deficit financing, and public debt, i.e., fiscal strategy paper and the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, among others.
The MTEF total expenditure (including contingency reserve) projection for 2024 stood at N278.6 billion, while 2025 and 2026 stood at N269.8 billion and 308.1 billion, respectively.
Idris Suleiman agreed that whenever the State sticks to the MTEF provision, the better the State in budget performance.
According to him, it would be better if the State House of Assembly could streamline each year’s budget as presented to it by the executive arm, in line with MTEF, to have a realistic budget that would increase performance at the end of the day.
He stressed that the MTEF was developed after an in-depth analysis and proper consultation with the Federal Government – leveraging on the income projection from the monthly statutory allocation, value-added tax, internally generated revenue, exchange crude, and other income.
He, however, highlighted Russia’s war on Ukraine, insecurity, flood, and other natural disasters, and inflation as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy and merger of multiple exchange rates as risk factors that are likely going to affect revenue allocation to fund the budgets.
In his remarks, Commissioner of the Planning and Budget Commission, Mukhtar Ahmed Monrovia, assured periodic engagement with civil society to ensure government programs have citizens’ input contained in the OGP principle.
“As long as I remain the Commissioner here, I will ensure we work together with civil society. I will also ensure we work with Kaduna State House of Assembly to help Governor Uba Sani to deliver his agriculture, and human development among others to the good people of Kaduna State,” he said.
The civil society groups that attended the one-day MTEF engagement include the Kaduna Social Protection Accountability Coalition, Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism, Civil-Society Scaling Up Nutrition In Nigeria, OGP, and Local Government Accountability Mechanism, among others.
Meanwhile, Civil society groups present the presentation to the Kaduna Government to stick to the provision of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) in preparing its annual budgets for the years 2024-2026.
