Kaduna Mobilizes Citizens’ Support For 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework
By: Femi Mustapha
In its commitment to Open Government practices, Kaduna state on Tuesday mobilized citizens’ contribution to the 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
Commissioner for Kaduna state Planning and Budget Commission, Umma Aboki Yusuf speaking on Tuesday during an interactive session with Private Sector, Women groups, People Living with Disabilities, and Accountability Mechanisms said the MTEF is an annual, three-year expenditure planning that sets out the medium-term priorities and hard budget constraints against which sector plans can be developed.
The document, according to him, indicates fiscal targets, fiscal risks, estimates of revenues, and expenditure including Govt. financial obligations.
The Commission said such engagement is important it is happening, as it will help the state government maintain the track that it follows in terms of budget formulation.
The commissioner, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Muhammad Bashir Mni, said the MTEF will be beneficial to the citizens because it is a document that will be used to form the budget for the state.
“The document is prepared at the beginning of every year within the first quarter so that we will get the actual revenue that will form the budget before going the budget formulation proper.
“It is useful for reallocation of resources for what the govt. intends to do, the priorities of government cannot be achieved without having a budget So for you to get the budget, you need to know the revenue for the cast of the state that is expected to get within the fiscal year. The first draft is out, so we want to share with citizens to know the level we are for them to have their input to it before” she said.
Presenting the 2023-2025 MTEF, Director for Budget, Budget, and planning, Idris Suleiman, said the benefits of the MTEF are to provide a backward-looking summary of key economic and fiscal trends that will affect public expenditure in the future i.e., Economic and Fiscal Update.
He added that it is to set medium-term fiscal objectives and targets, including tax policy; revenue mobilization; the level of public expenditure; deficit financing, and public debt, that is fiscal strategy paper and Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, among others.
“MTEF preparation for the year 2023 is quite challenging given the present global uncertainties on Macroeconomic assumptions after strongly recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, noting that short-term indicators suggest that global activity has slowed down.
It is expected that the 2023 budget estimate should be based on the MTEF document, as it has greater macroeconomic balance and budgetary predictability for the state’s efficient use of public monies.
“The MTEF document also aims at improving sectoral resource allocation by effectively prioritizing all expenditure based on the state’s socio-economic programmes it has historically provided more realistic estimates”. He said.
