Finance Minister Provides Major Highlights of 2021 Budget
The Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning today presented highlights of the 2021 Budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as approved.
The Public Presentation which held virtually via Zoom had various Ministers and Ministers of State in attendance including the Minister of Finance, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed.
Others include the various stakeholders, Civil and Non Governmental Organizations and the general public.
Some of the highlights include:
Recurrent expenditures with Defense and Security taking up the major chunk of the Budget to the tune of N838.56bn while Education follows suit to the tune of N545.24bn.
Others are, Ministry of Police Affairs N437.25bn, Ministry of Health N280.21bn, Ministry of Interior N227.02bn, Ministry of Youths and Sports Development N170.63bn, Office of the National Security Adviser N134.10bn, Ministry of Foreign Affairs N75.60bn, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development N69.74bn and Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation N59.36bn.
Selected Projects in the 2021 Budget include the Aviation sector with N3bn allocated to Safety and Security of Key Airports Facilities, N10bn for Construction of Second Runway at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, N900m for extension of asphalt overlay at Murtala Muhammad International Airport, N1bn New terminal building in Enugu among others.
Construction of rail lines will gulp N71.15bn across the Lagos – Kano rail line (Ongoing)
Calabar – Lagos (Ongoing), Ajaokuta-Itakpe-Alaja (Warri Ongoing), PortHarcourt to Maiduguri, Kano-Katsina-Jibiya-Maradi (in Niger Republic: New) and Abuja-Itakpe-Aladja.
Furthermore breakdown in the health sector shows N35bn approved for Basic Health Care Provision Fun (BHCPF), N5.5bn for counterpart funding for donor supported programmes including global funds, N45.19bn for Gavi/Immunization Fund and N514.80bn provisioned for the Federal Ministry of Health and it’s Agencies.
Critical Sector allocations for Education in the budget include N771.46bn provisioned for the Federal Ministry of Education and it’s Agencies for both recurrent and capital expenditures, N70.05bn for Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), and N323.29bn for Transfers to Tertiary Education Trust Funds (TETFUND) for Infrastructure projects in Tertiary Institutions.
N400Billion is allocated to Social Investment Programme in the #2021Budget. Recall that some of these Social Intervention include:
School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer, Survival Fund, Small and Medium Enterprise Development support, N-Power among others.
A legal framework to establish “Crises Intervention Fund” will be done while initiatives to improve revenue for Nigeria were also highlighted during the public presentation of the approved budget.
