30th September, 2015
Kazeem Ugbodaga
Following the approval of the reordering of the Lagos State Budget by the House of Assembly, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Kadri Abayomi, has revealed that budget performance will henceforth be measured by the budget outcomes as against inputs or outputs.
Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode had reordered the 2015 Budget and got approval for N19.7bn as capital expenditure and N5.7bn for recurrent expenditure.
Kadri said going forward, the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget will be more strident in the monitoring and evaluation functions to ensure that the people of Lagos State get value for money in all projects and programmes embarked upon by the government.
Kadri spoke at a workshop organized by SPARC/DFID at the Renaissance Hotel, Ikeja tagged “Lagos 2015 Self Evaluation and Assessment Tool” (SEAT) focused on budget performance tracking using deliveries as measurement as against input or output.
He opined that since the Lagos State Development Plan (LSDP) which provides policy guidelines to all MDAs presents outcomes and outcome target for each development pillar, nine Functional Groups with the standard Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) and each sector as per budget classification, it necessarily followed that the budget performance which is reported quarterly be hinged on the expected outcome of the expenditure incurred.
The expected outcome, he noted, would have been set and agreed upon at the bilateral budget discussion between agencies and the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget which now formed basis for tracking the performance of such projects and programmes by mileage even before completion.
On the 2016 Budget, the Permanent Secretary noted that, the state government would endeavour to employ the programme-based budgeting approach. He explained that, the programme based budget emphasizes that most priority programmes and projects should be fitted within a sectors resource envelope, monitored and evaluated to ensure value for money, and improve standard of living of Lagosians.
Kadri added that the budget process linked expenditure requirements to the core programmes of MDAs which aligned with the mandate of the MDA rather than having an activity-based budget.