The Auditor- General for the Federation (AGF), Samuel Ukura yesterday said the model adopted for the 2016 budget was not a zero based but the traditional envelope budgeting system.
President Muhammadu Buhari had while presenting this year N6.08trillion budget estimates, said the zero based budget system has been adopted. But when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Public Accounts for budget Defence, Ukura said though the earlier intension by the present government was to adopt zero based budgeting as a template, but realities on ground, later forced it to adopt the usual envelope based budgeting.
He said the N2.9bn budget estimates of his office for this year, was not arrived at through zero budgeting but that it was handed over to them as an envelope by the Ministry of Finance.
“Budgets of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government this year are all envelope based and not zero based as it has been the case over the years, including that of my Office, which is even largely done for us by the supervising ministry,” he said.
Explaining zero-based budgeting system, he said, “it is assumed that such expenditure does not exist, you start from zero and justify why that expenditure must be used.”