Coronavirus: FG to cut N1.5trn from 2020 budget
The federal government will be cutting N1.5trn from the
N10.59trn 2020 Appropriation Act as confirmed by the Minister of Finance,
Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed.
Zainab who disclosed
this after the federal cabinet meeting yesterday March 18, said the cut from
capital expenditure stood at 20 %; while recurrent expenditure would incur 25%.
She said;
“We’ve written every ministry and given
them guidelines on how these adjustments will be made to enable us have
detailed inputs from the ministries.
“But I can just
say that the bulk cut is about N1.5trn, the reduction in the size of the
budget. And this includes N457bn from PMS under-recovery.”
Asides revealing that
they will place an embargo on recruitment exercise and replacement, Zainab
further disclosed that government will continue to pay salaries and not sack
workers.
She added;
“On recruitment,
there is already an instruction to stop recruitment. What the agencies have
been doing is replacement but even that is being suspended. When things
improve, we will go back to the issue of recruitment. But for now, our wage
bill is already very high.
“The president has
directed that salaries and pensions must be paid unfailingly. So, we are not
looking at downsizing in anyway. We are maintaining our workforce as it is. But
we are just stopping the increase in the size of the nominal roll.”
This is coming after the minister revealed that the
coronavirus pandemic might lead to reduction of the 2020 budget which was
passed by the National Assembly at $57 per barrel oil benchmark.
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