Civil Society Wants Kaduna Govt Stick To MTEF To Trepare 2024-2026 Buudgets 

Civil society groups working in different thematic areas of Open Government Partnership (OGP) on Thursday asked the Kaduna Government to stick to the provision of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) in preparing its annual budgets for the years 2024-2026.

The MTEF total expenditure (including contingency reserve) projection for 2024 stood at N278.6 billion while 2025 and 2026 stood at N269.8 billion and 308.1 billion respectively.

The MTEF provides a tool for multi-year fiscal planning and budget formulation process aimed at enabling the Kaduna State Government to set fiscal targets and allocate resources to strategic priorities. 

The State had in 2014 prepared its first ever MTEF which covered the period of 2016-2018. It has been doing that including the very current one covering 2024-2026.

Presenting the draft document for citizens’ input, the Director of Budget in the Planning and Budget Commission, Idris Suleiman agreed that whenever the State sticks to the MTEF provision, the better the State in budget performance.

According to him, it would be better if the State House of Assembly could streamline each year’s budget as presented to it by the executive arm, in line with MTEF to have a realistic budget that would increase performance at the end of the day.

The Senior civil servant added that the MTEF was developed after an in-depth analysis and proper consultation with the Federal Government – leveraging on income projection from the monthly statutory allocation, value-added tax,  internally generated revenue, exchange crude, and other income.

He however highlighted Russia’s war on Ukraine, insecurity, flood and other natural disasters, and inflation as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy and merger of multiple exchange rates as risk factors that are likely going to affect revenue allocation to fund the budgets.

Earlier, Commissioner, Planning and Budget Commission, Mukhtar Ahmed Monrovia, assured periodic engagement with civil society to ensure government programmes have citizens’ input as contained in the OGP principle.

“As long as I remain the Commissioner here, I will ensure we work together with civil society. I will also ensure we work with Kaduna State House of Assembly to help Governor Uba Sani to deliver his agriculture, and human development among others to the good people of Kaduna State”, he said.

The civil society groups that attended the one-day MTEF engagement include the Kaduna Social Protection Accountability Coalition, Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism, Civil-Sciety Scaling Up Nutrition In Nigeria, OGP, Local Government Accountability Mechanism among others.