THE Federal Government yesterday hinged the delay in capital releases to service the 2016 Budget on procurement procedure and low revenue.

The Minister of Budget and Planning, Senator Udoma Udoma, disclosed this, in Abuja, while briefing the Sen. Danjuma Goje-led   Senate Committee on Appropriations, on the 2016 budget implementation.

He lamented the level of performance of projected revenue which stood at a mere 55 per cent in the first quarter of the year.

The minister also blamed the activities of members of the Niger Delta Avengers  that have consistently attacked oil and gas facilities for the dwindling revenue in the country, adding that revenue from the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) were equally below projections.

His words, “The overall releases are; 1.7trillion Naira was budgeted   and as at April,   871 billion Naira was released and that is almost 50   per cent release.  For overhead, 218 billion Naira was budgeted and 52 billion Naira was released, amounting to 25 per cent release and this is because of the low performance of revenue generation.  For Capital, 1.5 trillion Naira was budgeted and 235 billion Naira was released, amounting to 15 per cent release.

“There is a revenue meeting going on in Kano hence I won’t be able to give adequate revenue breakdown because we are not with the document here. That is why it is the expenditure figure that we will be able to give you. The Kano meeting was called to review revenue and the revenue situation because we are not achieving revenue targets which we set for the revenue generating agencies.

“The second reason for the low capital releases is the low revenue. Overall for the first quarter we were running at about 55 per cent in terms of our revenue expectations. The bulk of it is because of the problems in the Niger Delta which affected oil production which prevented us from reaching the 2.2 billion barrels even though the price is going up.  Oil production at a point dropped to below one million barrels per day.

According to the Minister, the releases so far cut across personnel, overhead and capital allocation to the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government.

He noted that it would be difficult to meet the expedite target if generated revenues were not enough, said,   “We are not achieving the targets set for revenue generating agencies in the country. If we don’t get the revenue we cannot meet the expenditure target.

Sen. Udoma, however, expressed optimism that things would improve with better revenue outlook before the end of the year with, especially with the recovery of  oil prices and increased revenue from NCS and FIRS.

He said, “We are hoping that as the year goes along, we will recover some revenue from oil as production increases. We also expect revenue coming from FIRS because people don’t pay taxes in the first quarter. FIRS had already reached 60 percent of the projected revenue as of June this year and we expect it to keep on rising.”