President Muhammadu Buhari is said to be targeting September 2022, to present the 2023 appropriation bill to the National Assembly.
The Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja, at a training on budget preparation using the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System.
The training was organised to train over 4,000 budget officers drawn from about nine hundred government ministries, departments and agencies nationwide.
Akabueze, who was represented by the Budget Office Director of Expenditure (Socials), Fabian Ogbu, said Buhari’s administration remained focused on ensuring consistent and timely preparation, submission, and approval of annual budgets, as part of its Public Financial Management reforms.
He regretted that MDAs usually do not study the Budget Call Circular in detail, which he said always results in them making avoidable mistakes if they complied with the relevant sections of the Budget Circular.
“The main goal of this training is to provide continuous learning to equip budget personnel with the requisite knowledge, skills and the tools they require to prepare and submit the 2023 budget.
“It has been observed that MDAs do not study the budget circular in detail, as such make mistakes that should ordinarily be avoided if they had complied with relevant sections of the budget cycle,” he said.
According to Akabueze, the 2023 budget is being prepared alongside extant federal government policies and guidelines as articulated in the 2023 Budget Call Circular and other relevant laws.