The budget for the Federal Ministry of Transportation as contained in the 2016Appropriation Bill is over 1,000 per cent higher than what was approved for both the Transport and Aviation ministries in the 2015 Appropriation Act.
President Muhammadu Buhari, while announcing the portfolios of his ministers, had merged the ministries of Transport and Aviation, but appointed a substantive minister for the ministry and a minister of state for aviation.
Although the Federal Government had yet to spell out the actual amount meant for both sectors in the 2016 Appropriation Bill, an analysis of the bill showed that the N215.8bn budgeted for the Transportation ministry was 1,428.5 per cent higher than the combined budgets for the ministries of Transport and Aviation in the 2015 budget.
In fact, the Transportation ministry’s budget for 2016 is N201.68bn higher than the combined budgets for the two former ministries this year.
In the 2015 Appropriation Act, the Transport and Aviation ministries got N11.98bn and N2.14bn, respectively.
While the Transport ministry’s recurrent and capital budgets for 2015 were N8.03bn and N3.95bn, the Aviation ministry’s recurrent and capital budgets were put at N998m and N1.14bn, respectively.
But in next year’s Appropriation Bill, the recurrent and capital expenditure estimates for the Transportation ministry were N13.8bn and N202bn respectively, a development which analysts described as a clear departure from the past.
Similarly, the ministries of Science and Technology and Solid Minerals Development have had their allocations increased compared to the situation in the past.