Efio-Ita Nyok|29 September 2016
The Speaker of the 8th Cross River State House of Assembly(CRSHA), Mr John Gaul-Lebo, has advised the Federal Government to effect a downward review of the 2016 Appropriation Law rather than sell national assets.
Speaker Lebo yesterday opined that national assets should not be sold to raise funds to bail the country out of its current recession.
He suggested that rather than sell the national assets, the Federal Government should revise the 2016 national budget from N6.06 trillion to N4 trillion.
He posited that his suggestion became necessary owing to the present economic recession and the challenges of funding the 2016 Budget.
Gaul-Lebo called on the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, to work with the National Assembly on the need to revise the budget for optimal implementation.
In his words, “If the economy is in recession and then the budget that we have is N6 trillion, the first thing to do is to revise the budget to an amount that is realisable.
“Mr President should do a budget priority and identify those projects that can be funded. He should look at those projects that can re-engineer the economy and fund them adequately.
“If our budget can go down to N4 trillion that we can realise and spend, then it will be better. We should revise the budget rather than selling our national assets.”
He said that if at this point in the year, the government was still looking for money to fund the 2016 budget; it should not be looking at the sale of national assets.
He said, “In Cross River, we are revising our 2016 budget by way of identifying priority projects we can fund while spreading the others up to 2019.”
The Speaker suggested that the projects that could not be funded in the 2016 national budget could as well be funded by the present administration in the coming years.
He said, “The 2016 Budget is a proposal; the proposal is based on the justification of internally generated revenue, monies from international development funding, foreign direct investment and then from borrowings to fund the budget.”
For the leading law maker, “The Federal Government should sit back and engage technocrats and stakeholders to inject developmental ideas that will move the country out of recession because selling the national assets is not an option.”
He urged the government to formulate a fiscal strategy and policy that would move the country out of recession, saying that cash injection was not the only solution to the problem.
Efio-Ita Nyok
Is a Blogger & the Editor of NegroidHaven.org
