BUDGET 2009: FG to release first tranche this week

Even as the House of Representatives is yet to  conclude its vetting of the 2009 appropriation Bill, the executive is set to commence disbursement of the first tranche of the budget to ministries, departments and agencies (MDA’s).
This fact was disclose last week by the minister of state for finance, Mr Remi Babalola and the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Ibrahim Dankwambo at the end of the monthly Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) where N435.40 billion that was  federally-generated last December was shared among the Federal, states and local governments.
The 1999 Constitution allows the President to spend up to 60 per cent of the previous year’s capital votes in case of delayed in the passage of the budget by the National Assembly.
The AGF also disclosed that his office would conclude work on the warrants last week, preparatory for the release this week, lamenting the high level of un-spent funds by MDAs from last year’s capital appropriation,
Sources disclosed that the decision to release the funds early is informed by the need to forestall a repeat of the poor implementation of 2008 budget in which almost =N-400Billion was returned as unspent allocations and poor execution of capital projects by MDAs
Details of the federally- generated revenue for December last year revealed that mineral revenue fetched the highest amount of N318.91 billion; non-mineral revenue, NN45.82 billion and Valued Added Tax (VAT) accounted for N30.42 billion.
A breakdown of the revenue distributed to the three tiers of government revealed that the Federal Government got N146.58 billion, or about 52.68 per cent of the statutory revenue and another N4.56 billion from the Value Added Tax (VAT) .
Similarly, the 36 states got 26.72 per cent share of the statutory revenue which amounted to N74.35 billion and 50 per cent of the VAT of N30.42 billion was N15.21 billion while the local governments got N57.32 billion, representing 20.60 per cent and another N10.65 billion from VAT, representing 35 per cent.