The Federal Government has released N4.33 trillion for capital projects between 2016 and 2018, a top official has said.
The Minister of Budget and National planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma who disclosed this during a press conference held at the ministry in Abuja to disclose the achievements of the administration in the last three and half years said the government increased the capital budget to reflate and stimulate the economy after suffering recession in 2016.
Giving the breakdown of the releases, the minister said the Ministry of Finance released N1.2 trn under the 2016 budget, N1.58trillion under the 2017 budget and as at the May 8 the sum of N1.55 trn was released for capital spending under the 2018 budget.
“An important strategy we embarked on in order to exit recession was to seek to reflate the economy. This was why we increased the capital budget. We increased budgetary allocations to capital expenditure- from 16.1% in 2015 to 30.2% in 2016, 31.7% in 2017, 31.5 % in 2018 and 26% in 2019 with priority given to the key execution priorities of the ERGP. We were also able to increase our capital our capital releases,” he said.
He also noted that the implementation of the ERGP resulted in the economy exiting recession in the second quarter of 2017 adding that the just released GDP numbers by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows the a first quarter growth of 2.01 percent.
The minister further explained that the growth was encouraging because it is the strongest first quarter performance recorded since 2015 and because the first quarter often records the slowest growth in GDP.
Senator Udoma who was not optimistic about the country meeting up with the 7 percent growth rate by 2020 said that FG is targeting the 7 percent achievement for the next four years.
