Budget 2017: Shall we have an early launch?

With the year turning into August which is the eight month, its better part has already expired, leaving early preparations for next year 2017 as the most appropriate thing to do. For the Nigerian economy this expectation remains an imperative given the circumstances of the 2016 budget which even by the consideration of the Federal government manifested several indices of failure.  And if the government itself cannot qualify as a success its own economic agenda as embedded in the 2016 budget, then the budget has failed indeed.
Economists and scholars as well successful business managers know and hold it as a self-manifest truth that any plan for executing an enterprise fails or succeeds to the extent that it meets or does not meet its own targets. For the 2016 budget its most defining feature in the public domain remains a poor record of missed targets. In several areas of its frame, the budget simply proved to be a non-performer thereby throwing both the government and the governed into quandary for much of the year.
For instance one of the areas of budget failure is the massive shortfall in projected revenue from the sale of crude oil in the international market. Even with the well-known depressed state of affairs in that global oil market, not a few Nigerians received with mixed feelings the recent announcement to civil society groups by the Minister of National Planning Senator Udo Udoma, that the country lost as much as N1.064 trillion which is equivalent to 55.2% of the half year revenue projection.
This announcement came against the backdrop of some ordinarily problematic, ambitious programmes in the budget, such as the N500 billion intervention fund. While Nigerians had been celebrating in advance that the package is coming to douse the excruciating hardship for a cross-section of the citizenry, circumstances surrounding the 2016 budget have made their expectation a forlorn hope. And just as the fortunes of the intervention fund hang in the balance, so it is for several other welfare provisions in the budget. 
Not surprisingly, as some expressed surprise at the unpalatable story given its unmistakeable negative impact on the 2016 budget, other more discreet observers lamented why the government did not anticipate the eventuality of revenue shortfalls and adjust its ambitions and expectations accordingly. The second school of thought hinges its argument on the fact that there had always been clear cut signs that as far as oil revenue was concerned 2016 will not be business as usual.
The story of the administration is like that of the wood pecker bird who is by tradition believed to be able to carve holes in every tree, and boasted that when its mother dies it would carve on hard rock. But on the eve of its mother’s death it developed a big boil on its beak and could not even carve on wood. The failure of the 2016 budget in the context so reported betrays a less that due diligence in the nation’s budget making process whereby she has remained prostrate and vulnerable, in the face of every wind of turbulence.
Beyond the vagaries of the international market the government has also fingered the destructive action of the Niger Delta militants for disrupting oil exports and thereby denying the country of oil revenue. Yet, while the global terrain may be out of reach of the government the same argument cannot hold for its management of the turbulence in the Niger Delta. In the latter case the ongoing macabre spate of hostilities between the military and restive youth in the region offers little relief, indicating that there must be a better approach to the situation that meets the needs of all stake holder in a sustainable manner.  That is if the tales of woe in that region shall ever end.
 From the benefit of hind sight, it may be helpful for the federal government to address itself to some factors that diminished the success prospects of the 2016 budget. Seen in context, a key factor for the failure of the budget was the avoidable delay by the then incoming APC administration to launch a budget for the country. Defying the time honoured tradition of governance being a continuum, the incoming government not only made mince-meat of the budget it inherited from the past administration but, also failed to provide an alternative plan of action to drive the nation’s economy between May and December 2015, thereby losing traction in respect of making good the transition period.
Meanwhile since the advent of this administration, the economy has witnessed drastic policy somersaults, outright policy reversals, and inadmissible missteps by policy makers and administrators of government business. In the process the distress of the Nigerian people has been deepened.
It is significant that the government has demonstrated its commitment to a more robust budget for 2017, especially with the shocks of 2016 which tested its resolve in many ways. The meeting between the Minister of Planning and the civil society groups offered significant insights into the thrust of the next budget. For instance the government is setting the oil price benchmark at $42.50, for a production volume of 2.2 million barrels a day. This is just as it anticipates an exchange rate of N290.00 per dollar.
 While all of these projections reflect a welcome preparation for the coming year, no development offers the government a better grasp of the economy than an early presentation of the 2017 budget, preferably before the end of September 2016. It is significant that both the Minister of Planning Senator Udo Udoma and the Special Adviser to the President on National Affairs Senator Ita Enang are products of the National Assembly where they were active in calling for early budgets for the country that shall run from from January 1st  to December 31st of each year.
Who knows if they were placed in their portfolios by providence, just for the purpose of availing the country of such a welcome dispensation that deviates from the present questionable tradition of perennially late budgets?  Only time will tell.