The Federal Government has called on the Budget Office of the Federation to put in place necessary measures that can guarantee effective and efficient delivery of the annual national budget.
The Minister of state, Budget and National Planning, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, made the call in Keffi,Nazarawa State, at a retreat titled “Repositioning the Budget Office for Effective Service Delivery” organised by the Budget Office of the Federation to strengthen the capacity and skill of its ‘Directorate-level officers’ against emerging budget challenges.

In a statement signed by the Ministry’s head of press Mr.Afolabi Olajuwon and made available to Economic Confidential in Abuja quotes Hajiya Ahmed as saying that “following the merger of the Budget Office and National Planning to coordinate socio-economic development for the country, it is necessary to streamline the activities of the Budget Office of the Federation for it to fully realise it’s mandate within the newly created ministry of Budget and National Planning.”

Hajia Ahmed, who was represented by the the Director of Finance and Accounts, Mr.S.O.S Odewale,said it is obvious that the Budget Office and the national Planning appear to be functioning independently of each other.
She added that “the present administration’s decision of the merger is to conceive annual budget that guarantees linkage between government’s national plans and policies adding that budget remains “an essential tool to translate abstract or general plans into specific action oriented goals and objectives”.
She recalled that “the budget office of the Federation carries it’s mandates through four critical processes that are essential to the President’s ability to plan and implement it’s priories across the executive arm.”
The Minister noted that “to carry out those mandates, it requires that the Budget Office of the Federation embraces innovative approaches and skills which the budget process, as tool of macroeconomic management demands.”
Earlier in his welcome address, the Director General of the Budget Office of Federation, Mr. Ben Akabueze, disclosed that the objective of the retreat was to subject the officers to review the activities of the office within the purview of Budget preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Akabueze added that the retreat will afford the budget officers to some new emerging budget technogical tools applicable to international budgeting standard to which the officers must be exposed to.