Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said yesterday that the federal government would adopt on a zero-based budgeting format for its 2016 budget planning.
According to the Vice President, the zero-based budgeting would be carefully coordinated to ensure that it is policy-driven specifically as it borders on proposed social intervention policy of the Buhari administration. Osinbajo said this when the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) paid him a courtesy visit in his office at the presidential villa, Abuja.
The vice president also met with a delegation from the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS) and the Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria (ASHON). The zero-based budgeting proposed by the federal government for its 2016 budget means planning according to needs and costs, as opposed to the existing envelope budgeting or traditional incremental budgeting.
The plan is based on existing income and expenditure as the deciding factor in national financial planning levels, which often incurs waste and assumes previous costs as constant. Osinbajo also told the NESG group that the introduction of the new TSA policy and its implementation by MDAs were a creative way of blocking leakages in the system to pave the way for a workable budget.
He noted that with the zero-based budgeting, the federal government would also focus on a bottom-up approach to development, just as he disclosed that the federal government was planning to set up an infrastructure fund in order to facilitate easy funding for critical areas of the economy. The infrastructure fund, he added, would be planned outside of the budget to handle major segments of the economy such as road and power.
“Government is working out a document that would guide the administration within the four years of its life-span,” the VP stated.
