"Over the years, we have listened to very beautiful and impressive budget speeches eloquently delivered in this chamber. Unfortunately, the implementation has not matched the words as economic policies often lack continuity and projects are needlessly discarded or abandoned".
So began the Senate President, David Mark before the President Goodluck Jonathan presented his budget 2012 proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly. One need not be an Alan Greenspan to see that there is no hope for the people in the budget proposal.The Goodluck led Federal Government will spend 72% of the budget paying salaries to the national assembly, ministers, federal workers, the army, police and all other federal government institutions. The left over would be spent on building roads, bridges and other things.
Also important to note is that this budget proposal seeks to put an end to subsidy on petroleum products with President Jonathan arguing at every opportunity that the subsidy sum would be channelled to other sectors especially agriculture.
For a developing country, one would expect that the focus should be on downsizing governement, eliminating duplication and leakages while reducing in essence the imbalance between recurrent and capital expenditure. At no time should the cost of governance be greater than the cost of government's responsibility. It is worthy to note that the 1999 Constitution states that: security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. With the government's cost of running itself yearly outweighing the cost of discharging government responsibility, there is need to ask pertinent questions: Why is the cost of governance so high? What have been the benefits to Nigerians? Does the high cost of governance eventually translate to high living standard by the majority? Should there be a reverse? Should there be a continuation?
We need no statistic to conclude that that govenment's policies are shamefully impacting far too little. It will worsen in 2012 as there is no hope that the 28% would be fully implemented. Budget implementation has always been a headache with the current finance minister claiming that this year's was 50% implementation. A figure quickly disputed by the Speaker. If there is any sector where the deregulation should take place, it is in the size of government and not on an issue that concerns the majority. A small responsible government with proactive tendency is what Nigeria needs to develop fast. Conclusively, this is a budget of false transformation and cannot offer the much publicised transformation agenda of the Jonathan administration.
We hope for the good of this republic, that the 28% is implemented and that the National Assembly can like they did last year, help prune down further, the cost of running our very fat federal government such that there are figures large enough to channel to education and agriculture.
So began the Senate President, David Mark before the President Goodluck Jonathan presented his budget 2012 proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly. One need not be an Alan Greenspan to see that there is no hope for the people in the budget proposal.The Goodluck led Federal Government will spend 72% of the budget paying salaries to the national assembly, ministers, federal workers, the army, police and all other federal government institutions. The left over would be spent on building roads, bridges and other things.
Also important to note is that this budget proposal seeks to put an end to subsidy on petroleum products with President Jonathan arguing at every opportunity that the subsidy sum would be channelled to other sectors especially agriculture.
For a developing country, one would expect that the focus should be on downsizing governement, eliminating duplication and leakages while reducing in essence the imbalance between recurrent and capital expenditure. At no time should the cost of governance be greater than the cost of government's responsibility. It is worthy to note that the 1999 Constitution states that: security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. With the government's cost of running itself yearly outweighing the cost of discharging government responsibility, there is need to ask pertinent questions: Why is the cost of governance so high? What have been the benefits to Nigerians? Does the high cost of governance eventually translate to high living standard by the majority? Should there be a reverse? Should there be a continuation?
We need no statistic to conclude that that govenment's policies are shamefully impacting far too little. It will worsen in 2012 as there is no hope that the 28% would be fully implemented. Budget implementation has always been a headache with the current finance minister claiming that this year's was 50% implementation. A figure quickly disputed by the Speaker. If there is any sector where the deregulation should take place, it is in the size of government and not on an issue that concerns the majority. A small responsible government with proactive tendency is what Nigeria needs to develop fast. Conclusively, this is a budget of false transformation and cannot offer the much publicised transformation agenda of the Jonathan administration.
We hope for the good of this republic, that the 28% is implemented and that the National Assembly can like they did last year, help prune down further, the cost of running our very fat federal government such that there are figures large enough to channel to education and agriculture.
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