Minister of Finance in Nigeria, Mrs Kemi Adeosun
It was yesterday revealed that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) blew over N241.95billion on mainly unnecessary foreign and local trips, welfare and others. A breakdown of the N241.95 billion shows that MDAs wasted the money on top 5 items in 2014 which were Travels (local and international) and it cost Nigeria N69.42bn. Welfare gulped N49.71bn, Office Stationary and Computer Consumables N44.43bn, Maintenance (All Fixed Assets) N43.20bn, training (Local and international) N35.19bn respectively.
This colossal waste of much needed money was disclosed by Head, Efficiency unit, Federal Ministry of Finance, Patricia Oniha, as she lambasted the Ministries and MDAs over financial recklessness.
Speaking at the ‘Lunch Time Reforms Seminar Series on “Efficiency in Conduct of Government Business’’ in Abuja she said, for growth and development (Job creation, diversification of the economy, improved quality of life etc), more of the nation’s revenue should be channelled to capital projects and that to achieve this objective, Recurrent Expenditure has to be minimised.
Oniha said, “Governments now operate under conditions of revenue scarcity and massive deficits, Thus a fundamental change in the way governments conduct their affairs has become imperative’’.
She explained that the Efficiency Unit was established in order to achieve a better cost structure for government and get maximum value for money spent as government needs to use its resources more judiciously in ‘’Lean and Fat’’ to enable government invest more in capital projects rather than on recurrent expenditure.
Oniha explained, “The mandate of the E-Unit is on overhead Expenditure to generate savings for government from the procurement process using the government’s large buying power and reduce costs through administrative tools and other measures.
Over the years and across the world, countries have had to deal with the issue of limited financial resources relative to their needs, the challenge therefore, has always been how to distribute the limited finances between capital and recurrent expenditure where options have typically been to, operate a deficit budget by borrowing to fund the gap, selling of some government assets and operate a balanced budget by matching expenditure to the available finances.’’
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