Two months after the passage of the 2020 Appropriation Bill, the Federal Government is yet to release funds for the execution of capital projects in the budget.
The Accountant General of the Federation, AGF, Ahmed Idris, stated this on Tuesday when he briefed the Senate Committee on Finance on the dwindling status of the Excess Crude Account.
The AGF said even though the Federal Government has begun implementation of the recurrent component of the 2020 budget, it was yet to release any amount out of the N340 billion it planned for the first quarter of the year.
According to the Chief Accountant, only the sum of N20.786 Billion has been released for what he refered to as “Capital Supllimentation”.
For real Capital Project, he said no amount has been released.
The AGF, however, stated that the Cash Management Office (a department in the AGF Office) was working on the release and that hopefully the process will be concluded by next week.
The AGF said the Federal Government has released the sum of N493.92 Billion, representing 6.5% of the Personnel Cost for January and February.
On the dwindling status of the Excess Crude Account, the AGF gave a breakdown of how monies in the account shrunk from $350 million to $71million.
According to the AGF, the last expenditure from the account was the sum of $250m investment in the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority.
The AGF explained that the expenditure was with the backing of the National Economic Council chaired by Vice President, Yemi Osibajo.
He also said that another payment of $496million was made from the ECA for the purchase of Super Tucano Aircraft in 2018.
Other expenditure was the payment of $4 million this year as professional fees for lawyers that worked on Paris Club funds.
The AGF also said that another $1.9 billion was taken from the ECA as Paris Club refund to some states.
The Senate panel asked the AGF to forward it with details of all the expenses particularly the identity of the lawyer who received the payment of $4million.
