By; YUSUF ISHAKU GOJE
Addressing development challenges largely depends on the quality of planning, realistic budget performance and value for money in service delivery.
The Kaduna State full-year 2023 budget performance report recently released by the Planning & Budget Commission showed that out of the final total budget of N376.3 billion, there was actual release of N230.3 billion. This is a 61.2% performance, with a huge balance of N145.9 billion.
The question begging for an answer is, if we cannot achieve at least 85% performance in 2023, what are we going to do differently to achieve satisfactory performance in 2024, with a higher budget of N458.2 billion? The 2023 performance has again validated the 2022 Auditor-General’s report, which opined that our revenue estimates are exaggerated and bogus.
This is a cause of concern, considering that the state government in 2024, has increased the targets of some of the non-performing revenue generating MDAs.
The report further shows that recurrent expenditure had 66.7% performance, while capital expenditure had a performance of 57.5%. On the revenue side, government share of FAAC had an impressive 114.3% performance, while the independent revenue of the government had a performance of 69.9%, with a balance of N26.8 billion. Other receipts performed far below expectation, with aid and grants as well as capital development funds (CDF) having a 28.2% and 48.1% performance respectively.
These unimpressive performances were evident especially in key sub-sectors with allocations above N10 billion. Note the public financial management prescribed benchmark for the first, second, third and fourth quarters are 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% performance respectively. Using this bench, the acceptable full-year performance should not be below 85%.
A look at some of these key sub-sectors show that the Ministry of Education had 55.0%, Ministry of Health had 58.8%, Ministry of Public Works & Infrastructure had 56.2%, Ministry of Internal Security & Home Affairs had 66.4%, State Assembly had 39.6%, Ministry of Finance had 74.0%, Ministry of Housing & Urban Development had 68.0%, and Metropolitan Authorities had 77.7%. Above you will observe that despite the State government meeting of the benchmark allocations for education and health, the performance leaves much to be desired.
A few other MDAs with budget allocations below N10 billion include: Ministry of Human Services & Social Development had 7.1%, Ministry of Agriculture had 71.1% of the meager budget allocation of N1.8 billion, Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources had 40.4%, and Ministry of Sports Development had 26.7%. What is more worrisome is not the budget releases but if there was actual cash-backing as well as whether it was adequate, gotten timely and efficiently utilized by the MDAs.
In view of this, another question begging for an answer is, how realistic is the 2024 approved budget? For instance, Independent Revenue, which had a 69.9% performance of its N89.2 billion target in 2023, has now been given a target of N120.0 billion in the 2024 budget – an increase of 35.19%. Similarly, the Capital Development Fund (CDF) receipt was raised from 93.8 billion, with a 48.1% performance in 2023, to N151.5 billion in the 2024 approved budget – an increase of 61.23%. Disturbingly, in 2023, about 41 MDAs had less than 50% performance, out of which 23 had a performance of less than 10%.
Evidently, Governor Uba Sani has impressively hit the ground running in implementing the 2024 approved budget with groundbreaking activities.
However, budget implementation is not a sprint race but a marathon. Sustaining the current momentum will be dependent on high revenue performance and quality of utilized releases to strategic priorities down the line. More so, that the State has the burden of debt service to the tune of about N25.4 billion. We look forward to improved budget performance in 2024.
Goje is an active citizen, civil society actor and OGP enthusiast.
