N7.7bn Abandoned Projects: FG Must Shift From Cash-based Budgeting — Tambuwal

Worried about the abandonment of project worth N7.7 trillion by the Federal Government, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, has called for a diversion from cash-based budgeting to performance based budgeting to avoid wastages and improve implementation.
 A performance based model of budgeting allows for the allocation of resources based on verifiable project viability/performance index rather than yearly allocation of cash to projects as is currently being practiced by the federal government.
Tambuwal made the call yesterday while declaring a stakeholders forum organised by the House Committee on Appropriations open at the Hilton Hotel, Abuja.
According to him, in 2011 alone, the Presidential Projects Assessment Committee estimated that over 11, 886 projects valued at N7.7 trillion were abandoned after government had expended N2.2 trillion on them
“Nearly N9 trillion is needed to complete them now and the figure is rising. This is unsupportable,” he stated.
Defending his stand, the speaker said, “Because allocations depend on proofs that the projects are viable, tracking is made easier and implementation becomes virtually inevitable. I am assured that only with such performance based budgeting can we have effective implementation”.
“Over the years, the degrees to which budgets are implemented have fallen to very low levels”, he continued, adding, “some of the consequences are now obvious to all: spiralling unemployment; rising crime; breathtaking poverty; collapsed infrastructure; poor social service delivery; poor industrial base and a nation littered with abandoned federal projects and programmes”.
He challenged the stakeholders to find ways of stopping the wastages in the future by advocating performance budgeting to allow for focus on results vis-a-vis the resources expended rather than ‘throwing’ money annually on programmes, whether they are viable or not.