The joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives on Banking and Currency during the CBN Budget defence session yesterday were furious as it queried the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for allegedly spending N1.062 trillion revenue above the N482.167 billion proposed income for the year 2015.
The lawmakers, were also angry to discover that the apex bank overshot its spending in the 2014 appropriation by over fifty percent during the 2015 budget performance and 2016 budget defence of budgetary allocation to CBN.
The lawmakers did not fail to note that the apex bank had imbibed the habit of spending more than what was budgeted to it. They added that the bank should have remitted N400 billion operating surplus to government’s treasury.
According to Vanguard, the lawmakers also queried what they described as the astronomical increase in staff cost from N158.134 billion in 2015 to N408.808 billion as proposed in 2016 budget; and non-inclusion of commission for brokers, Dutch income, in its budget proposal. They wondered why the CBN should spend N780 million on the dealing room, N226 million for recruitment, N1.5 billion on research, N75.980 billion loss incurred from SWAP, N.8 billion on data collection and about N1 billion on Entrepreneurial Development Centre.
The committee demanded for CBN financial statement, nominal roll, details of foreign and domestic investments, among other contentious issues raised at the meeting.
To address some of the contending issues on the operations and core mandate of the banks, the committee resolved to hold a special session next week with CBN management.