The Federal Government says as of the end of January, it has achieved 30% implementation of the capital component of the 2020 budget extended to March 31, 2021.
The minister stated this on Monday at the National Assembly when briefing the lawmakers on level of implementation of the extended budget.
She, however, said since all the funds have been released and most of the agencies have accessed them, remarkable percentage implementation will be achieved before the end of March.
Earlier, House of Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, tackled the Finance minister over the reported difficulties being faced by Ministries Departments and Agencies in accessing released funds.
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Gbajabiamila said since it was not a usual thing to extend the life span of a budget, there was a need for them to be shown visible and identifiable results the executive has achieved with the extension granted the capital component of the 2020 budget from December 31, 2020 to March 31, 2021.
He said, “This special session of the leadership of National Assembly interfacing with you is meant for overseeing the extension because feelers from the various MDAs on the implementation is not all that cheering.
“Many of them have complained to our various committees, difficulties being faced in accessing funds said to have been released by your ministry.
“You are all aware that for good reason, we have this extension. There was COVID-19 last year as it affected the budget process and we have to extend the implementation to enable the minister and her team to achieve some level of implementation throughout last year.
“Now we are about four weeks to the end of that extension and we do not seem to know where we are, where we stand, that we need to do.
“We want to know the level of performance achieved so far whether it justifies the extension granted or not,” he said.
When the Senate President asked her whether 100 per cent Implementation performance will be achieved or not by the MDAs before the March 31 deadline, Ahmed said series of factors will determine that.
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“Such factors include all the MDAs accessing the funds that had already been released about three weeks ago, procurement processes and capacity of agencies to utilize the funds within the time frame,” she said.
The minister told the federal lawmakers that as of December 2020, 89 per cent of the capital component of the budget had been achieved from the N1.74 trillion released.
