The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, on Monday confirmed the release of the sum of N350bn to Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government for the implementation of capital projects contained in the 2017 budget.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that Adeosun had on June 6, during the public presentation of the budget, stated that the Finance ministry was ready to release the sum of N350bn for capital projects once the budget was loaded.
Adeosun confirmed to The Punch on Monday that the funds had been released to the various agencies of government.
She said the release of the funds was done in tranches with the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing getting the highest amount of capital releases.
This, according to her, is followed by the ministries of transport, defence, and agriculture and rural development.
She said water resources, interior and health were among the ministries with huge sums of capital releases made to them by the Federal Government.
“Yes, we did it (N350bn capital release) in tranches. Largest allocations were for the PWH (power, works and housing), transport, defence, agric, water resources, interior and health,” Adeosun said.
The 2017 budget, with capital allocation of N2.36tn, is targeted at projects that are aligned with the core execution priorities of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan
The capital allocations have been crafted to stimulate activities in critical sectors of the economy that have quick transformative potential such as infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals, services, and social development.
For instance, under the 2017 budget, the Federal Government will be embarking on a rail modernisation programme to which N148bn has been allocated as counterpart funds for projects to be financed by China.
They are the Lagos-Kano, Calabar-Lagos, Kano-Kaduna, Ajaokuta-Itakpe-Warri, Kaduna-Idu and other rail projects.
In the area of electricity, the sum of N40bn for service-wide provision has been made to settle reconciled outstanding bills of government agencies as part of a strategy to revamp the ailing power sector.
