The federal government is to save a whopping N100 billion from reduced allocation to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with overlapping functions.

The government, which has started implementing the Steve Oronsaye Report which proposed the scrapping or merging of such MDAs began in the 2013 budget to trim allocations to agencies with duplicate functions, since scrapping them cannot be implemented immediately. The expected result of this budgetary slash for the affected MDAs will be a saving of about N100 billion in 2013 by the government.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister for Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who made this known at the 2013 budget briefing in Abuja, said that some the MDAs were created by Acts enacted by the National Assembly, accordingly, only a repeal of the Act can scrap them.

Okonjo-Iweala, said “we are continuing the roll-out of Integrated Personnel Payment Information System (IPPIS) across all MDAs which will result in savings in personnel costs. In the spirit of the Oronsaye Report, we have started trimming down allocations to agencies with duplicate functions. For the 2013 Budget, this resulted in about N100 billion of savings, and we hope to have even greater savings in 2014” she said.

However, since some of these agencies with duplicate functions were established legally, the minister of finance said the executive “will require the support of the National Assembly in reviewing the relevant legislations before we implement the rationalisation exercises.”

The minister said that the cost of governance had reduced adding that for instance, the share of recurrent spending in total expenditure has reduced from 74.4 per cent in 2011 to 67.5 per cent in 2013 She said the government had sustained its policy of re-balancing its expenditure in favour of capital investment over the medium term. She said, “The share of recurrent spending in total expenditure has reduced from 74.4 per cent in 2011 to 67.5 per cent in 2013.

“Similarly, capital spending as a share of total expenditure has increased from 25.6 per cent in 2011 to 32.5 per cent in 2013.”


http://www.leadership.ng/nga/articles/49501/2013/03/08/fg_slashes_n100bn_allocation_mdas_overlapping_functions.html

Okonji-Iweala at work...