Kaduna commission collating 2022 budget proposals

The Kaduna State Planning and Budget Commission (PBC) says it is collating 2022 budget proposals from Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs).
The Director Budget in the commission, Mr Idris Suleiman,said in Kaduna on Wednesday that MDAs would defend their proposals between Sept. 6 and Sept. 10, adding that the draft budget would be forwarded to the Executive Council for approval by October.
On citizens’ engagement, the director said that effort was ongoing to get inputs from communities using the Community Development Charter, as a bottom up approach to the budgeting process
According to him, the CDC is a written document containing the development needs of communities listed in order of priority and the government is making effort to institutionalise it in the budget process.
“After the draft is approved, we will organise a town hall meeting for citizens to engage the budget and make further inputs for ownership after which it will be send to the State Assembly.
“This is parts of the state’s government commitment for open budget for citizens participation to ensure transparency and accountability in line with the Open Government Partnership (OGP),” he said.
Meanwhile, some civil society organisations had held a virtual strategy session on mainstreaming the CDC into the Kaduna State Budget.
The session was organised by the OGP Technical Working Group on Open Budget, in collaboration with Coalition of Associations for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development (CALPED) and Open Kaduna Radio.
The strategy session, supported by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) was to agree on strategies to get the CDC into the budget.
In a communique issued in Kaduna on Wednesday, the CSOs noted that CDC was being used to capture citizen’s demand in the local government annual budgets, adding, however, that the charter was yet to inform the state budget.
They said that the ongoing 2022 budget formulation process presents an opportunity for stakeholders to engage it towards ensuring that the CDC was captured in the state 2022 budget.
The organisations resolved to collate and disaggregate the prioritised needs of communities, based on sectors and forward to the PBC for considerations
They added that CDC Champions would pay courtesy visits to their respective State Legislators to submit copies of the prioritised needs of the communities.