FG Capital Expenditure in 2018 Hits N1.1tn -Zainab Ahmed

• FG Capital Expenditure in 2018 Hits N1.1tn -Zainab Ahmed

In an effort to boost infrastructure and support economic productivity, the Federal Government announced a program to diversify the economy by investing in various capital projects.

According to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, by the end of December 2018, President Buhari led-administration would have spent N1.1 trillion on capital projects.

Speaking at the public presentation of the 2019 budget in Abuja, She said N820.5 billion has so far been released by the government to the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of the government.

“The N820bn is 43 per cent of MDAs’ capital; we are working to push this to N1.1tn by the end of December and that would be including the statutory transfers, the service wide as well as the rest of the MDAs whose capital we are currently processing.”

“There are also capital releases that are done as part of the capital supplementation, that is to say, its service wide that is not in the N820bn.”

However, when asked why the Excess Crude Account dropped by $1.68 billion in the past three weeks, the minister said $1 billion of the withdrawn fund was approved for security operations in the North-East.

She said, “Recall that the NEC (National Economic Council) had authorised the use of $1bn from the Excess Crude Account for security. So, the performance of that instruction is what has produced what we have in the Excess Crude Account.

“So, it’s been largely depleted but we are still saving into it and this is the third month that we have been saving consistently into the Excess Crude Account.”