FG plans special fund for roads, power

Vice-Presidential Prof. Yemi Osinbajo
 

The Federal Government is planning to set up an infrastructure fund in order to facilitate easy funding for critical areas of the economy.

The infrastructure fund, according to Vice President Yemi Osibajo, will be planned outside of the budget, to handle major segments of the economy such as road and power.

“Government is working out a document that would guide the administration within the four years of its life-span,” the Vice President told members of the National Economic Summit Group who paid him a visit on Tuesday in Abuja.

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According to a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Vice President, Laolu Akande, the FG is also planning to use a zero-based budgeting format for its 2016 budget planning.

“Zero-based budgeting is planning according to needs and costs, different from the existing envelope budgeting or traditionally incremental budgeting whereby the planning is based on existing income and expenditure as the deciding factor in national financial planning levels, which often incurs waste and assumes previous costs as constant,” the statement explained.

The Vice President said the zero-based budgeting would be carefully coordinated to ensure that it is policy-driven, especially regarding the proposed social intervention policy of the Buhari administration.

Osinbajo said with the zero-based budgeting, the FG would also focus on a ‘bottom-up’ approach to development.

The Vice President who also met with a delegation from the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers and the Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria, told the NESG that the introduction of the new Treasury Single Account policy and its implementation by Ministries, Departments and Agencies was a creative way of blocking leakages in the system to make way for a workable budget.

During the meeting with the NESG, the delegation praised the government for the introduction of the TSA policy as a sound financial policy and offered to be part of the advocacy.

During his meeting with the CIS delegation and the ASHN, the Vice President disclosed that the government would explore the avenue of utilizing the capital market as another means of providing alternative funding options for the execution of capital projects.

He also observed that allowing retail investors to come into the nation’s capital market would deepen the market with potential for multiplier effects on other sectors of the economy.

The Vice President stated that some of the problems of the capital market were due to unethical practices by some market operators.

He added that those who caused the crash in the market in the past were not punished and called on the two bodies to engage in self-regulation as a means of protecting investors and the market.

In his remarks, the leader of the delegation and Acting President of CIS, Mr. Oluwaseyi Abe, commended the Buhari administration for what it had achieved within 100 days. He cited the feats to include security, power and the anti-corruption crusade.