The Federal Government has made plans to spend N292.7 billion to offset financial obligations to local contractors/suppliers of government. This represents 1.79 percent of total expenditure.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this in Abuja on Friday at her 2022 budget breakdown.
Settling government’s obligations to contractors and suppliers she said “is in line with the FGN’s commitment to offset accumulated arrears of contractual obligations dating back over a decade.”
In the coming year, the Federal Government, she said, has proposed to spend N3.61trillion on debt service which is 22 percent of total expenditure, and 35.6 percent of total revenues.
Speaking on the need for early passage of the 2022 budget, Ahmed explained that it “will significantly contribute towards achieving government macro-fiscal and sectoral objectives. However, revenue currently remains our main fiscal challenge.”
To this end, the government she said has kicked off efforts aimed at addressing revenue leakages which include: concluding the service-wide implementation of IPPIS; dimensioning cost of tax waivers and promoting policy dialogue and transparency around tax waiver regimes; elimination of regressive subsidies on petrol price and electricity tariffs. Cost-to-income-ratio cap for Government Owned Enterprises with a view to improving remittances to FGN’s coffers.
