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| Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala |
The development was confirmed by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, through a statement issued by her Special Adviser on Communications, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu.
The two-paragraph statement said the fresh amount released had brought the total capital releases for the first and second quarters of this year to N400bn.
The statement read, “The Federal Ministry of Finance has released the sum of N200bn for capital projects for the second quarter of the year.
“This brings the total capital releases for the first two quarters of 2014 to N400bn.”
The Senate had on April 9 passed the budget, raising the amount in the fiscal document from the N4.642tn submitted by President Goodluck Jonathan to the National Assembly on December 19, 2013, to N4.695tn.
Highlights of the budget as passed by the upper chamber of the National Assembly and signed by Jonathan are: statutory transfers, N408.68bn; debt servicing, N712bn; recurrent expenditure, N2.454tn; and capital expenditure, N1.119tn.
The lawmakers had tinkered with the original provision of the budget, raising the recurrent expenditure from the original N2.43tn submitted by the executive to N2.454tn.
They also raised the capital expenditure to N1.119tn from the N1.10tn earlier proposed.
On the focus of the 2014 budget, Okonjo-Iweala had stated that many policies that would drive economic growth would be implemented in various sectors of the economy.
Some of these are the housing policy, which will be implemented by the Nigeria Mortgage Refinancing Company; the sugar policy and the automotive policy.
For instance, the minister said that beginning from next month, about 10,000 people would begin to benefit from the mass housing scheme of the Federal Government.
For agriculture, aviation and solid minerals sectors, she said they would get massive support through incentives in the area of equipment to boost their contributions to Gross Domestic Product.
Source: The Punch
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