Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said National Assembly would pass 2020 Appropriation bill before end of year if the Executive presents it to the assembly before end of September.
Gbajabiamila made this known at a roundtable with heads of relevant government agencies, development partners and professionals bodies on Tuesday in Abuja.
The speaker, represented by the Deputy Speaker, Idris Wase, said that the House of Representatives assumed office with a commitment to conduct holistic reforms.
He maintained that the reforms would ensure that government lived up to its responsibilities to the Nigerians.
He said: “We promised and we will deliver on our commitments to remove regulatory and policy bottlenecks so that businesses can thrive and our economy can attract new investment from within and outside our shores.
“We are determined to address the problems of our significant infrastructure deficits by funding critical infrastructure projects across the country.
“Working with the private sector to devise and implement effective strategies to encourage private sector investment in public works project.”
The speaker expressed the assembly’s commitment to revamp national security and policy framework through implementation of a community policing strategy.
According to him, that will bring our citizens and our communities into an enduring partnership with the security agencies to jointly ensure that our communities are rid of the criminal elements.
Gbajabiamila said that the National Assembly Reform Roundtable is one of the platforms intended to be used to drive the process of reform across critical sectors.
He said that healthcare, education, economy, national security, social justice and social welfare were top of the reform agenda.
He also said that the reform efforts, no matter how well-meaning or well-intentioned will often fail when there was insufficient support from the stakeholders and from the wider community.
The lawmaker said that the roundtable existed among other reasons to serve as a vehicle for consensus building.
Gbajabiamila said that the responsibility to manage government expenditure through the appropriations process was the central power of the legislature.
He said that government intention to deliver on the promise of infrastructure development, insecurity, quality education and economic growth will not be met until a budget framework that adheres to the best practices of effective budget policy.
Gbajabiamila said that reforming the appropriations process would ensure greater accountability, improved budget implementation and achieve some level of certainty in the process.
He said that stakeholder should have in mind that in pursuing and delivering any honest reforms, we would often be called to make the hard choices.
He urged the stakeholders not to hesitate to challenge established practices in their submissions and deliberations.
Parastatals present at the meeting include Accountant General of the Federation, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission and the Nigerian Customs Service.
Others are Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigerian Stock Exchange, Nigerian Labour Congress and relevant professional bodies.
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