The Budget Office of the Federation (BoF) has said over 4,000 staff from 900 Ministries, Departments, and Agencies would be trained on how to use Government Integrated Financial Management Information System-Budget Preparation Sub-System (GIFMIS/BPS).

The BoF Director-General, Ben Akabueze, disclosed this in Abuja on Monday during the commencement of the training for the MDAs.

The DG, who expressed concern over the MDAs’ failure to study the 2023 Budget Call Circular in detail, said the training of the staff was necessary because of the need to expedite the process so that the 2023 Executive Budget Proposal would be submitted to the National Assembly by September 2022.

Akabueze, who was represented by the BoF Director, Expenditure and Socials, Fabian Ogbu, said: “This lack of attention to details has been identified as the reason there are many mistakes in the final budget document.

“To address this, over 4,000 participants involved in budget preparation from about 900 MDAs will be trained in the next two days to perfect their budget preparation skills.

“The Executive Budget Proposal will be submitted to the National Assembly by September 2022 pursuant to Mr. President’s directive, and in a bid to get the 2023 Appropriation Bill passed and signed into law by 31st December 2022.”

He further decried that “MDAs do not study the Budget Call Circular in detail and as such make mistakes that should ordinarily be avoided if they had complied with the relevant sections of the Budget Circular.

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“The training is to provide continuous learning to equip budget personnel with the requisite knowledge, skills, and tools they require to prepare and submit the 2023 Budget in a timely and efficient manner.

“To this end, one of the modules at the training will address key items and sections to note in the 2023 FGN Budget Call Circular,” Akabueze said.

He added that BoF had already sent the budget circular again to participants for studying prior to the event.

“MDA has since prepared and submitted its budget online and in ‘near realtime’ using the GIFMIS-BPS application.

“This has helped to address some of the challenges that were experienced during budget preparation in prior years,” the Budget Office boss said.

On the 2023 budget preparation, Akabueze said they “intend to maintain the use of the GIFMIS-BPS. Furthermore, we plan to leverage on some of your feedback and lessons learned from previous budget preparation exercises to improve your experience this year.

“They have engaged teams of experts to handle different aspects of the training including some fundamental budget concepts as well as hands-on training using the GIFMIS-BPS for budget preparation.

“They will bring their wealth of experience in public finance management, budgeting, GIFMIS, and digital technologies to bear on this programme.”

The final document, according to him, “reflect your sectoral mandates, Ministerial Priority Areas as well as relevant contributions to the achievement of the Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2021-2025.”

The Star