ECOWAS commission proposed $602million community budget for 2019
The Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS) has presented a budget proposal of $602 million (381,612,734) Units of Account, to the Parliament for 2019 fiscal year.
The chairman of the Administration and Finance Committee (AFC) Mallam Musa Sani Nuhu made the budget presentation during the ongoing 2nd ordinary session of the ECOWAS parliament in Abuja.
Sani Nuhu said there has been over 70% compliance so far from community levy from member states and other funding from donors will be available to finance the budget. ‘There has been a lot of compliance from member countries and Nigeria being the biggest contributors has reached the final process payment’.
The chairman also explained that 73 % of the budget will be used for infrastructure, health, education and projects that will touch the lives of people directly while the rest will be for administrative cost.
‘ We have moved ECOWAS of states to ECOWAS of the people ,therefore projects must be visible and tangible so that people will feel and see what ECOWAS is doing’.
This is the first time the Parliament is exerting its oversight function, giving it opportunity to contribute to the budget of the community.
The Budget figures was in West African Units of Accounts (UA) and using the budget document, 1 U.S. dollar is equal to 0.6337 UA.
At the end of the presentation, the parliament referred the budget proposal to the Ad-hoc Committee on Administration, Finance and Budget Control to report back to plenary on Saturday.
