Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed has called on Staff of her Ministry and its parastatals to be champions of the Change Agenda of the present administration.
The minister made the call, Monday, May 23, 2016 at the opening of a 5 – day Specialised Training Programme on Reform and Service Improvement organised for the staff of her Ministry and parastatals in Abuja.
Mrs Ahmed said that civil servants were the engine room for growth and development as well as engine room for the implementation of government development projects.
“The civil servants should drive the implementation projects of the administration.
There are lot of things that are not efficiently done in the service”
Explaining further on the importance of the Servicom/Reform Coordination Departments in MDAs, she stated that the officers of the department have a responsibility of identifying on a continuous basis, what is not working well and advise on how best to correct these things.
” The purpose of this training is to remind the officers of their role and their functions in change management in re-engineering of our business processes in all the MDAs” the minister said.
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Accordingly,she stated also that, government can achieve and deliver more efficiently on the mandate of each ministry and by extention on the mandate that the Federal Government has made commitment to the people of Nigeria.
N
o fewer than 60 participants drawn from Reforms and Coordination Unit of the ministry and all the Parastatals under the ministry are participating in the training programme.
On the 2016 budget, Mrs Ahmed said that the implementation had started, saying that funds had been released on a systematic basis.
“Funds have been released for projects that were ready to go and the implementation had started in earnest”
According to her, the 2016 budget had some unique properties and also exceptional in number of ways.
” Let me say that the budget of N6.6 trillion so far is the largest that Nigeria has ever had and it is very ambitious.
It has a capital provision of 29 percent”
Mrs Ahmed also described the focus of government on the non-oil revenue as a serious commitment of the government to diversify the economy, pointing that
in previous year, the oil revenue in the budged ranged from an average of 70 per cent.
She listed the provision for social intervention programme as very critical in the budget and that 34 priorities key programmes had been also been identified to achieve maximum results.
Salisu B. Haiba
Assistant Director (Press)
