Drama as agency presents 2015 budget to Reps

The budget defence by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, has turned dramatic if not comical, as the Investment and Securities Tribunal (IST), reportedly submitted its 2015 budget for 2016, Ripples has learnt.

The chairman, House Committee on Capital Market, Hon. Tajudeen Yusuf, who acknowledged receipt of the copy of the budget on Thursday expressed outrage for the slip.

Expectedly, the discovery caused the budget defence session of the agency to be put on hold by the Committee.

Speaking on the issue, Yusuf, said: “We expected to take the budget defence of the IST but we realised that the budget provision for IST in the 2016 budget proposal is just a copy, exact copy of the 2015 appropriation. It is word for word, figure for figure. And items that were dealt with and completed in 2015 were just repeated.”

While responding to questions on the level of implementation of the 2015 budget of the agency, Yusuf, who blamed the Budget Office for the error, said: “We looked into the budget about two weeks ago and, apart from the issue of personnel that the agency treated late in 2015. The 2015 budget for IST was ok.”

The committee also disclosed to reporters that the Senate has also discovered the same repetition in the IST budget.

Chairman of the IST, Ngozi Chianakwalam, who was confronted with this development, refused to comment on the issue.

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