Buhari To Submit 2023 Budget Proposal To NASS Next Month—Akabueze

President Muhammadu Buhari will, before the end of next month, submit the 2023 budget proposal to a joint session of the National Assembly.

The Director-General. Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja at a training on budget preparation using the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System.

The GIFMIS kicked off since 2012 with 93 pilot Minis-tries, Departments and Agencies who are using it for budget implementation.

Currently, about 4,000 officials of government in 900 MDAs are being trained on how to use the integrated financial management platform in implementing the budget.

Akabueze who was represented by the Director, Ex-penditure (Socials) in the Budget Office, Mr Fabian Ogbu, said the federal government under Buhari is de-termined to ensure consistent and timely preparation, submission and approval of annual budgets as part of its Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms.

To achieve this, he said the Budget Office has already commenced a series of activities related to the process of preparing the 2023 Budget.

These, he stated, include a series of engagements and stakeholder consultations with key revenue generating agencies, civil society organisations, the Nigerian Gov-ernors Forum, the National Executive Council, the Na-tional Assembly as well as the Federal Executive Coun-cil.

He said, “The desired outcome of this training is to en-able participants to refresh their knowledge, fine-tune skills and have access to the tools required to prepare and submit the 2023 budget on the GIFMIS-BPS with minimal errors.

“The Executive Budget Proposal will be submitted to the National Assembly by September 2022 pursuant to Mr President’s directive, and in a bid to get the 2023 Appropriation Bill passed and signed into law by 31st December 2022.

“I am counting on your commitment, cooperation and support to achieve this goal. As in previous years, the Budget Office Helpdesk will be functional throughout the budget preparation period to provide any further as-sistance MDAs may require.”

He said the 2023 budget is also being prepared in tan-dem with extant federal government policies and guide-lines as articulated in the 2023 Budget Call Circular and other relevant laws/regulations.

The DG Budget however, lamented that MDAs do not study the Budget Call Circular in detail and as such make mistakes that should ordinarily be avoided if they had complied with the relevant sections of the Budget Circular.

To address this, Akabueze said one of the modules at the training will address key items and sections to note in the 2023 Budget Call Circular.

“I am counting on your commitment, cooperation and support to achieve this goal. As in previous years, the Budget Office Helpdesk will be functional throughout the budget preparation period to provide any further as-sistance MDAs may require.

“I hereby urge you to take full advantage of these two days to ask all the questions you may have and learn as much as you can so that by the time you are through with the training, you are well able to prepare and sub-mit your 2023 budget on the GIFMIS/PBS with mini-mal errors,” he added,