2017 Budget: Debts On Federal Roads Hit N2.8tn
Liabilities on Federal Government’s road projects have hit N2.792tn, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, told the House of Representatives Committee on Works on Tuesday.
He spoke in Abuja during a meeting with members of the committee on the performance assessment of the 2017 budget.
The committee is chaired by a lawmaker from Enugu State, Mr. Toby Okechukwu.
The minister said the mounting debts covered completed projects, inherited claims of past years and ongoing projects across the country.
“N2.792tn is the total contractual liability,” Fashola stated.
Ironically, the total allocations to works in the 2017 budget was N305bn.
In the 2018 budget estimates lying before the National Assembly, the combined allocations to works, power and housing is N555.8bn.
The total provision for capital projects across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government in the 2018 budget is N2.4tn.
The implication is that if the whole N2.4tn is to be used to settle the liabilities on road projects, the government will still be in deficit of N400bn.
But, Fashola told the lawmakers that the debts did not mean that the road projects were not being implemented.
He argued that the liabilities actually indicated that the government was working and underscored the confidence contractors had in the current government that they would be paid.
For the 2017 capital implementation, the minister disclosed that N265.5bn worth of certificates had been generated for completed projects.
He stated, “We have not paid this money, but we have continued to work. There is no state in the country one federal road project or another is not going on. We are present in every state and the Federal Capital Territory.
“The difference may be that the projects are not located in places where each of us may want them to be. So, the fact that payment has not been made does not mean that work is not being done.”
Fashola further stated that the generated certificates put the 2017 budget performance on roads at 73 per cent.
However, members grilled the minister, raising questions on the dilapidated state of many highways and the seeming rise in the number of abandoned and slowly executed projects.
Those who grilled the minister included Okechukwu; the Chairman, Committee on Finance, Mr. Babangida Ibrahim; Mr. Abubakar Kannike; Mr. Pat Asadu; Mr. Solomon Bulus-Maren; and Mr. Emmanuel Ekon.
They also sought explanations from Fashola on why the government’s new 25 road projects had been delayed in taking off fully.
Responding to the barrage of questions on the slow implementation of projects, the minister mentioned the Public Procurement Act as a major setback for speedy processing of contracts.
He noted that the usually lengthy and cumbersome procurement processes could slow down the pace of work on any project, not matter how well-intended.
The minister called for a review of the law to ease the procurement processes that sometimes took up to three months or more to be completed before contracts could be awarded.
“At both the informal and formal interactions with our parliamentarians, I have raised this issue of the lengthy procurement processes. It is an area that we all have to look into to see what can be done to fast-track the work before us,” he stated.
He also urged the members to share the details of the committee’s oversight report with his ministry so that all the observations on the state of the country’s roads would be quickly addressed.
Okechukwu reacted to Fashola’s appeal on the procurement law and gave the assurance that the legislature would seek to amend it.
“The long process of procurement is not helpful. We need to look at the law again,” Okechukwu stated.
Meanwhile, the minister also said the Federal Government would graciously hand over federal roads in any state to the government of that state if the latter was desirous of repairing them.
He cited the cases of Lagos and Kaduna states, which had since taken over some federal roads in their domains.
Source: PUNCH
