Connect with us

Business

Hard times ahead for FG contractors

Published

on

Indications emerged that the Federal Government may actually be broke as a result of the falling prices of crude oil, which has led to reduced revenue to the nation’s treasury.

This hint was dropped by the Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, when he revealed that the ministry’s N100bn proposed budget for 2015 was slashed by the Ministry of Finance to N11bn, representing an 89 per cent slash.

Onolememen stated this when he faced the Senate to defend his ministry’s estimates for the fiscal year.

According to him, the Finance ministry predicated its action on the economic realities on ground.

The minister expressed concern that only 33 out of the 210 ongoing road projects had been provided for in view of the “lean allocation” to the ministry.

He also said the provision was not sufficient to encourage contractors to sustain appreciable progress on their work sites.

He however said that due to the lean capital budget, a model of Public Private Partnership was being explored to ensure that more capital projects were carried out this year.

Most members of the Senate Committee on Works described the budget of the ministry as laughable .

The Chairman of the committee, Ayogu Eze, said the budget was very terrible for a sector that needs at least N500bn annually for road construction and maintenance.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now

Click to comment

0 Comments

  1. Don Lucassi

    March 10, 2015 at 11:06 am

    I dont know how a 12.5% reduction in world crude price would translate to an 89% reduction in the expected expenditure by the Ministry of works, as allocated by the finance ministry. This is pure daylight robbery. I should not even go on to detail the potential devastating ripple effect from this lie we are told. So now another, atleast 80 billion is about to be stolen right in front of Nigerians by the so called cabal. There is God o.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

sixteen − eight =