FG Slashes 2021 ITF Budget By N3b – Sen. Alkali
By Andy Asemota
The Federal Government budget for the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) indicates a reduction of N3,000,446,074 in the proposed 2021 capital expenditure, Chairman, Senate Committee on Industries, Saidu Alkali, has said.
Alkali, who spoke at the joint budget defense session of the Senate and the House Committees on Industries with the ITF on Friday, noted that the government budget of the ITF fell from N5,611,284,755 in 2020 to N2,610,838,681 in 2021.
He noted that in view of the current delicate state of the country’s economy, a detailed scrutiny of the revenue sources of ITF and other agencies and not just their expenditure patterns had become imperative.
The ITF is one of the agencies of the government that are partially funded from annual Federal Government appropriation which covers some portions of their personnel and capital costs.
He stated the ITF, which had N43,468,031,400 as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) component of its budget in 2020, proposed a total sum of N44,514,553,320 in 2021, representing an increase of N1,046,522920.
The Senate decried as unsustainable the performance of most revenue generating agencies of government that had been neither effective nor efficient in their revenue generation drive yet fritter away the relatively poor revenue generated, such that only a fraction of the IGR were remitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
“For the avoidance of doubt, this joint committee will not just approve any line item simply because it appears in your budget. You must give us very good reasons to make every approval you desire. The fact that our annual budgets have become largely budgets financed from borrowings has made this very imperative,” Alkali maintained.
Presenting the agency’s 2020 budget performance, 2021 budget proposal reports for recurrent and capital expenditure patterns and revenue performance projections, the Director General of the ITF, Anthony Ari, said its proposed total income will rise by N1,046,522,920 from N43,468,030,400 to N44,514,553,320 next year.
“The figure estimated for year 2021 training fund of N41,094,250,000 is lower than the 2020 budgeted training fund of N41,652,000,000:00,” the Chief Executive Officer of the ITF stated.
Ari also said the recurrent expenditure estimated in the 2021 budget is N39,042,157,718 while the total capital expenditure stands at N4,905,643,719.
“The ITF adheres strictly to due process and other relevant financial guidelines in all her transactions.
All hands shall be on deck to generate the expected revenue for the fund in order to effectively key into the next level Agenda of the Federal Government,” he assured.
