Budget: Kaduna consults with citizens on 2020-2022 state expenditures

Sola Ojo, Kaduna

As a local subscriber to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the Kaduna State government and its citizens on Thursday met to review the state’s 2020-2022 medium term expenditure framework (MTEF).

MTEF is a tool for planning government revenue and expenditures for more than a year (usually three years) before preparing the budget. This is important to citizens because it will help government plan a realistic budget in order to realistically implement what government promised them.

The key determinants are the growth rate of the economy, inflation, internally generated revenue, exchange rate and oil bench mark.

Speaking during the citizen consultation programme organised by Kaduna State planning and budget commissions, supported by a non governmental organisation known as Partnership to Engage, Learn and Reform (PERL), Chairman, Open Government Partnership (OGP), Citizens arm, Mallam Mustapha Jumare, said that since government represents the mass of citizens, it is important for the people to have their say with regards to how their common resources are being expended by those they have entrusted with their mandate.

“So, since budget is the major way through which these resources are being expended, it is good for the citizens and government to engage this important document for preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation – first with the MTEF.

“We have seen al ot of interest on the side of CS. We have impressive turnout when compared with what we had last year when we started this engagement. I’m also learning a lot of new things with regard to budget,” he said.

Principal Budget Officer, Budget Department, Kaduna State Planning and Budget Commission, Linda Yakubu, said, “we are here to engage the citizens on budget process and MTEF is the first step in budget process. We have come with a draft document that we want to engage citizens with, get their input and to let them know how important the MTEF is in budget processes.

“One of the requirements of physical responsibility commission is to prepare this MTEF. While doing that, we have to do it with the consideration of stakeholders. We have earlier engage the organised private sector, the marginalised group and now, we are meeting with the CS, media and academia.

“In addition, as a member of OGP, and one of the requirements is to engage the citizens in budget process, procurement process and monitoring of budget implementation. Basically, we want to see what we are doing right and what we may not be doing right and how we can move forward collectively.”