‘2017 budget will stimulate economic growth’

The 2017 appropriation bill passed by the national assembly will stimulate economic growth and pull the country out of recession, Abubakar Amuda-Kannike, a member of the house of representatives, has said.

Amuda-Kannike of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Oyo state, said this on Friday in an interview with NAN.

The national assembly had passed the 2017 appropriation bill of N7.44 trillion on Thursday.

The budget is N143 billion more than the N7.30 trillion budget presented to the legislature by President Muhammadu Buhari on December 14, 2016.

Amuda-Kannike said the country is going to have a “budget of recovery and development” due to the appropriation of the expected revenue.

“A good look at the budget will tell you that there is a departure from a situation where there is huge disparity between recurrent and capital projects value in the budget,” he said.

“This year, we are looking at a situation where 30 per cent of the budget will be for capital projects. Before now, we used to have about 60 per cent of our budget for recurrent expenditure.

“There was no proper focus on capital projects; there is no economy that will grow or recover if the government does not invest on capital projects.’’

He said the 2017 budget will not only address the huge infrastructural deficit in the country but will also “guarantee conducive environment crucial for economic activities to thrive”.

He said there have been situations where manufacturers leave Nigeria for neighbouring countries where economic conditions were more encouraging.

“But now we are focusing on infrastructure and this will engineer growth,” he added.

“You will now see more roads are going to be constructed, we will have more power generation and electricity will become more constant and there is going to be more infrastructure.”

Speaking during plenary on Thursday, Mustapha Dawaki, the chairman of the house committee on appropriation, justified the increase on the budget.

He said it will help cater for some critical sectors of the economy.

He revealed that N10bn was appropriated for the construction of the second Abuja runway even as funds were also provided for the Itakpe-Warri rail line.

Dawaki also said that the expected additional revenue from increased benchmark price of crude oil from USD 42.50 to USD 44.50 as well as other budgetary needs prompted the committee to increase the budget to N7.44 trillion.

A breakdown of the budget showed that N2.1 trillion was appropriated for capital expenditure and N2.9 trillion for recurrent expenditure.

The ministry of power, works and housing had the highest capital expenditure of N533bn, the ministry of agriculture and rural development got N103.7bn while the ministry of education got N56.7bn.