FG TO BORROW $6B TO FINANCE PIPELINE PROJECTS

The Federal Government plans to borrow a whopping $6,084.78 million from external sources based on the rolling pipeline projects of 2014. It will also borrow another N570 billion from domestic sources.

According to its borrowing programme for the 2015 fiscal year, the external funds would be based on the expected drawdown on existing loans and new borrowings. In one of the documents accompanying the 2015 budget proposal obtained by New Telegraph, the drawdown on existing loans which will amount to $6,084.78 million will be sourced from different financial institutions including the Eximbank of China, Eximbank of India, African Develop ment Bank, French Development Agency, Japanese Intenstional Cooperation Agency (JICA) as well as Diaspora Bond. On the other hand, the N570 billion domestic loan will be sourced through bonds and treasury bills.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had a week ago presented a N4.4 trillion budget proposal for the 2015 fiscal year. Out of this sum, N411.8 billion is for statutory transfers, N943 billion is for debt service, N2.6 trillion is for recurrent expenditure while the balance of N387 billion is for contribution to the Development Fund for capital expenditure.
The statutory transfers are as follows: National Judicial Council, N73 billion; Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), N50.96 billion; Universal Basic Education (UBEC), N72.1 billion; National Assembly, N150 billion; Public Complaints Commission, N2.5 billion; Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), N62billion and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has N1.2 billion. In the sectoral allocations, Education came tops with N399.8 billion; followed closely by Defence with an allocation of N323.5 billion, Police Formations and Commands got N312.7 billion while Health had an allocation of N237.5 billion. Ministry of Interior had the sum of N154.5 billion allocated to it.
Others include Foreign Affairs, N44.5billion; Youth Development, N70.7billion; Agriculture and Rural Development N32.2 billion; Information has N23.1 billion; Communication Technology has N10.6 billion while Ministry of Justice has N19.5 billion allocated to it in the 2015 budget proposal.
The 2015 Appropriation Bill also contains an addendum where the Federal Government has made a provision of N102.5 billion to be released from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation to the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) as additional contribution to the Development Fund for capital expenditure next year. Also, over N360 million has been earmarked to be spent on utility bills, books, newspapers and magazines for the State House in the 2015 Appropriation Bill.
A breakdown of the budget of the State House Headquarters which houses the Office of President Goodluck Jonathan showed that the sum of N185,963, 317 is to be spent on an item marked Utilities General; another sum of N73,417,948 will be spent on electricity charges; N30,317,389 on water rates while the sum of N44,604,291 is to be sent on telephone charges.
Also, the sum of N6,239,029 has been set aside for the procurement of books, N16,625,534 has been earmarked for newspapers while another N3,088,391 will be spent on magazines and periodicals. Similarly, Vice-President Namadi Sambo will be spending the sum of N21,648,222 to fuel his fleet of vehicles just as N12,734,932 has been earmarked as cost of fuelling the generator to provide alternative power supply. Meanwhile, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) has put the pension contribution by both public and private sectors into Retirement Savings Account (RSA) at the end of second quarter of 2014 at N2.5 trillion.
The PenCom Quarterly Report, as obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said there was an increase of N93.08 billion, representing 3.82 per cent over the total contributions remitted as at the end of first quarter of the year. According to the report, the contribution by the private sector during the quarter is N42.21billion while the public sector contributed N50.87 billion, bringing the total contribution to N93.08 billion. The cumulative contribution of the public sector is 45.87 per cent higher than that of the private sector during the period. “While the private sector contributions were higher than that of the public sector during the quarter, the cumulative contribution of the public sector was, however, 45.87 per cent higher than that of the private sector,” it said.
The report said the private sector contributions increased from N977.32 billion at the end of the first quarter to N1.02 trillion in the second quarter. It added that the average monthly contributions for the private and public sectors were N16.96 billion and N14.07 billion respectively during the quarter. According to the report, the ranking of Pension Funds Administrators (PFAs) by total contributions shows that the top three PFAs accounted for 47 per cent of total contributions. It added that top five PFAs accounted for 62.7 per cent of total contributions received over the same period. “While the bottom three PFAs accounted for 0.26 per cent, the bottom five PFAs accounted for 1.20 per cent of total contributions