The Kaduna State government has disbursed N152.4 million to the 23 local government councils (LGCs) of the state as performance grant for Local Government Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Programme (LFTAS).
The commissioner for planning and budget commission, Mr Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, disbursed the grants in Kaduna after the 14th Economic Planning Board Meeting, which he chaired.
Abdullahi explained that the LFTAS programme was introduced by the Kaduna State Executive Council in June 2018 and that the programme was a reform initiative designed to strengthen fiscal performance and sustainability at local government levels.
He further said, the programme will also strengthen intergovernmental fiscal coordination by supporting good practice on fiscal behaviour and standards across the local government council and will reduce fiscal risk to the state government in the long run, help in efficient implementation of development plans and policies and increase community participation in governance.
He added that the programme focuses on five thematic areas as disbursement link indicators (DLIs), namely budget preparation process, adherence to policy documents, and strengthened internally generated revenue.
Others, according to him, are improving public procurement systems and reducing payroll fraud, and tackling absenteeism and nonchallant attitude of primary school teachers and health personnel.
He disclosed that a local government can get up to N20 million based on their performance in line with the DLIs adding that after verification of the LGCs performance by an independent agent, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Zaria, Jema’a and Kaduna South local councils emerged the best three performing councils.
He said that the LGCs got the FTAS incentives of N9.94 million, N9.27 million, and N9.26 million respectively, while the remaining LGAs got between N3.49 million and N8.75 million respectively.
He said that based on impressive performance in the first phase, the government would consider increasing the incentive to between N100 million to N200 million in the future.
The commissioner however said that the increment would be subject to the improved performance of the LGCs in entrenching fiscal transparency, accountability, and sustainability in council’s administration.
