The Federal Government plans to spend a total of N30.04billion on the housing sector in the 2019 fiscal year, the budget proposal presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly has disclosed.
Buahri had in December, 2018, presented a budget proposal of N8.83 trillion for the 2019 fiscal year to the joint session of the National Assembly.
During the year, the government’s proposed expenditure, which stands at N30.04bn and compared to N3,598,363,868 voted in 2018 for the sector, would be focused on Construction/Provision of Housing.
The money, which will be spent mostly under the Federal Government’s National Housing Programme nationwide, which was captured as ‘Ongoing’ project.
Apart from the FG’s NHP, which is proposed to gulp N30.04bn, there are some other schemes aimed at housing delivery in the country that have been captured in the 2019 budget.
To this end, the Federal Government Staff Housing Loans Board, an agency under the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHSCF) plans to spend N100m this year on Housing Loans Scheme.
The OHSCF also allocated N146.9m for its ongoing Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) Programme.
Similarly, the sum of N280.44bn was proposed for the construction and rehabilitation of several roads nationwide.
A comparison of the 2019 and 2018 budget proposals for the Ministry of Power Works and Housing showed that while the budget for road construction dropped by N14.7 billion, that for road rehabilitation/repairs dropped by N56 billion.
The document showed that N346, 166,726,658 was budgeted for the Federal Ministry of Power Works & Housing (excluding agencies under the ministry). Out of this amount N10,281,446,795 was allocated for recurrent expenditure while N335,885,279,863 was allocated for capital projects.
Out of the N335.8bn allocated for capital projects, N124bn has been proposed for ‘Construction/Provision of Roads’ in 2019. This amount is lower by N14.7bn compared to N138.8bn budgeted for the same purpose in 2018.
Further analysis showed that the budget for road repairs in 2019 also got a massive cut, dropping by N56bn. The sum of N103.3bn was budgeted in 2019 compared to N159.5bn proposed in 2018.
