Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed

The Federal Government is set to slash salaries of civil servants and merge agencies with duplicitous functions in its efforts to weather the rough economic storm it currently faces. The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, who stated this in Abuja on Tuesday at the ongoing ‘National Policy Dialogue on Corruption and Cost of Governance in Nigeria’, disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the salaries committee to review payroll and also review the number of agencies. According to her, the government will weed out unnecessary items from the budget as a move to cut the cost of governance in the country. This move is consistent with the 2011 Steve Oransanye Committee report, an 800-page document, which had far-reaching recommendations on MDAs that should be scrapped, those to be merged and those to become self-funding, thereby freeing funds for the much-needed capital projects across the country. Speaking at the event organised by the Independent Corrupt Practice Commission, the Finance Minister noted that the government had approved a N13.88 trillion budget with a deficit of over N5.6 trillion. The government projected a revenue of N7.98 trillion to fund part of the 2021 budget.
The Sun, except headline