Except radical steps are taken, the executive arm of government has told the National Assembly that the execution of development projects contained in the yet-to-be passed 2020 budget would be difficult.
The federal government hinged its fears on the allocation of a whopping N3.3 trillion to personnel cost in the appropriation bill while the capital vote was only N2.1trillion.
Finance and National Planning minister, Zainab Ahmed, stated this yesterday in Abuja during her defence of the ministry’s budget before the Senate.
Ahmed said that the situation was further compounded by the low productivity among federal agencies and appealed to the National Assembly to support the executive to take drastic steps to check the trend.
The federal government needs about N2.28 trillion to fund the deficit in the N10.33 trillion 2020 budget.
“There is a national problem of low productivity; we have a national problem of low productivity, especially within government. Our personnel cost in the 2020 budget proposal is N3.3 trillion from a budget size of N10.3 trillion. We should collectively work together to see how we can reduce the cost.”
She said that if they (agencies) can’t reduce the cost, they should be able to maximize the staff that they have. And how we can increase their productivity? When we compare a staff cost of N3.3 trillion and a capital expenditure of N2.1 trillion, it is a mismatch. We are definitely portraying ourselves as a nation that our concentration is not on developmental projects but on consumption.
“It is something that has built up overtime. We have to do certain things that are unpopular, bold and radical steps to make a difference. It is not what the Executive alone can do, we will be urging the National Assembly to support us when we want to take some radical actions in order to increase productivity not just in the public service but also nationally,” Ahmed said.
The minister said that most federal agencies had been enrolled on the integrated payroll system of the government, noting that the platform had helped the country to save huge funds.
She said: “It helps us to control practices in the past because we used to have those that were not supposed to be on the payroll. The military, the police and most agencies of government except for a few tertiary institutions of learning are still resisting but we have been engaging them and we are in the process of uploading them into the system.
“The resistance to the Integrated Personnel Payroll System (IPPIS) is misplaced as far as I am concerned because there is no agency of government that must resist it. It must be treated with utmost importance. The universities have some peculiarities. The same goes for some medical institutions. For instance, a consultant can consult in different hospitals but he should still have one primary point of employment. A lecturer, based on the approval given by the minister is also allowed to lecture in more than one university.
“That, however, does not mean that he should feature in all the instructions as a staff member. At best, there would be special allowances that would be due to them for the extra work. The allowances should, however, not be included in the payroll. We have been discussing with them and we are arranging peculiar allowances for them too.
“This is to make sure that the extra work they do, according to the limit that is allowed, is provided for in the payroll. They have understood now that their concerns would be addressed and they have started working with us.
“As we speak, the accountant-general members of staff are on the field trying to capture the last batch of the workers into the IPPIS. It has been extremely beneficial because we have had savings up to about N250 billion from the exercise and the savings would be more when we integrate the HI component of the IPPIS which is controlled by the head of service, it is a record of staff. When a staff retires from the service, the system will automatically log him out. At the moment, we await instructions before we log out retired staff. Some people have retired but they are still on the payroll, so there is a lot of cleaning up that we have to do. We have been working with the head of service to fast-track that integration,” Zainab stated.
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