An analysis of the 2017 budget has shown that the Federal and 36 state governments will spend half of their N13.5 trillion total budgets for the year 2017 on salaries and overheads.
This revelation follows from a breakdown of the 2017 budget documents which showed that the central and 33 state governments would spend N5.9 trillion (41 percent) of their total budgets on salaries.
According to the breakdown, the total Federal government’s budget for the year is N7.29 trillion; of which the recurrent expenditure will gulp N2.98 trillion. Other components of the Federal Government budget are statutory transfers (N414 billion) and debt servicing (N1.66 trillion).
33 states in the country in the same vein, has a combined budget of N6.22 trillion and they are spending N2.60 trillion (42 percent) on worker’s emoluments. There are no budget figures from Adamawa, Ondo and Kebbi states.
Experts said the swollen recurrent expenditures keep coming despite the economic recession triggered by the dwindling oil revenues and low votes for development projects.
They explained at Nigeria’s official exchange rate of 304 to a US dollar, the Federal and state governments will spend $42.9 billion this year. The 33 states are spending $19.7 billion while the Federal government is spending $23 billion.
Capital spending by the Federal and the state governments this year is N5.77 trillion (43 percent) which is N2.24 trillion for the federal and N3.53 trillion for the states, while further analysis of the budget estimates of the two tiers of government show an increase of N1.3 trillion from last year’s N12.2 trillion.
The total recurrent expenditures of the Federal and state governments also rose by over N200 billion, from N5.3 trillion last year to N5.5 trillion this year, while capital projects by the two tiers soared by over half a trillion naira, rising from N5.04 trillion in 2016 to N5.77 trillion this year.
