The Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, has said that the 2022 budget figure proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari is “low.”
Akabueze said this while speaking on Channel Television programme, “Politics Today” on Thursday.
Buhari presented a total budget of N16.39 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly on Thursday.
The figure is the highest in the country’s history and over N3 trillion more than the 2021 budget.
However, Akabueze, a leading person in the budget preparation, said the federal budget is so low compared to the country’s unmet needs.
He said, “Well first of all, I think we need to understand that as large as the size of this budget might seem to Nigerians, and as you say it’s the largest so far, the truth of the matter is that our budget is still way lower than it should be. The problem of Nigeria isn’t that, I’m talking about the government now, we’re spending too much money, it’s that we’re actually spending too little.
“If we look at, I mean there’s a global measure for this, you know, which is called a public expenditure to GDP ratio. For Nigeria, the public expenditure to GDP ratio is still in the order of 12 per cent. The average for Africa is 22 per cent, some countries in Africa have about 30 per cent, I mean in the developed countries, the ratio is, you know, typically over 40 percent. And so, you know our budgets.
“But, why are our budgets still so low relative to our needs, and it’s because the budgets are so low in terms of size; that is why there is still a lot of unmet needs. But there’s a correlation between that and our revenues.
“By the IMF measures, you know, standards, the country needs at least 15 per cent revenue to GDP ratio to either begin to approach fiscal viability. Alright, and we are just barely over 50 per cent of that.”
