BEVERLY HILLS, July 2, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has described as colossal waste the N241.95 billion incurred by Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDAs, in 2014 alone, stressing that such waste of funds amidst the difficult economic situation in the country is not acceptable.
A breakdown of the items indicates that travels (local and international) cost government N69.42 billion, welfare N49.71 billion, office stationery and computer consumables N44.43 billion, maintenance (all fixed assets) N43.20 billion and training (local and international) NN35.19 billion respectively.
Speaking at the Lunch Time Reforms Seminar Series on ‘Efficiency in Conduct of Government Business’ in Abuja on Friday, the Head, Efficiency Unit in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Patricia Oniha stressed that more of the country’s revenue should be deployed to capital projects for there to be growth and development, in form of job creation, diversification of the economy, improved quality of life.
She stressed that to achieve this objective, recurrent expenditure has to be moderated, adding that “Governments now operate under conditions of revenue scarcity and massive deficits. Thus a fundamental change in the way governments conduct their affairs has become imperative”.
The Efficiency Unit (E-Unit) was established to achieve a better cost structure for government and derive maximum value for money spent, as government needs to use its resources judiciously in “lean and fat” times, with the aim that government also needs to invest more in capital projects rather than recurrent expenditure.
According to Oniha, “The mandate of the E-Unit is on overhead Expenditure to generate savings for government from the procurement process using the government’s large buying power and Reduce costs through administrative tools and other measures.
“Over the years and across the world, countries have had to deal with the issue of limited financial resources relative to their needs, the challenge therefore, has always been how to distribute the limited finances between capital and recurrent expenditure where options have typically been to, operate a deficit budget by borrowing to fund the gap, selling of some government assets and operate a balanced budget by matching expenditure to the available finances’’.
She maintained that the new thinking of government is to ensure the most efficient use of resources and that all opportunities to make savings and avoid waste and increase productivity are vigorously being pursued.
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