Use budgetary allocations for execution of core mandates- Senate urges agricultural sector

The Senate has urged training and research institutions in the agricultural sector to use their budgetary appropriations for execution of their core mandates.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Sen. Abdulahi Yahaya, said this when he spoke with journalists in Lagos.

Abdullahi, who led an oversight meeting of the committee with training and research institutions in agricultural sector, said government has done much to provide fund for the institutions in the sector.

He, however, said the major area of concern was the way the approved funds were been deployed by the agencies.

“Now the major area of concern is the way in which these funds are deployed, we say the deployment should be more in the areas of the cognate responsibilities of these institutions so that they should be able to work and raise revenue.

“Because once they can work and raise revenue, raise local employment, they should be given a kind of leeway in some relative operational independence.

“So that in the areas where they can raise revenue, the government investments should be in those areas where these institutions can do their technical and operational capacity to be able to make investments in the real sector of the economy which can add value,” he said.

He said that the National Assembly would look at the budgets to see how it could assist the agencies to deploy resources to those areas where they can add value to their work.

Yahaya said from the information from the oversight meeting, so far a lot of the personal and capital budgets of the organisations have been implemented almost 100 per cent; saying that areas like the expenditure account was hovering around 60 to 70 per cent performance.

The former senate leader said that the committee embarked on the oversight to have knowledge of the implementation and utilisation of funds and appropriations made in 2020 and 2021 budget by the agencies.

He also said that the oversight was designed to have knowledge of the challenges being faced by the agencies to evolve ways of solving them.