Kano Budget Forum - Participants at plenary		Panellists at the Budget Forum

The Kano State Ministry of Planning and Budget (MoPB) organized a one-day Budget Forum in collaboration with DFID - Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), with relevant stakeholders to discuss strategies for facilitating improvement in knowledge and strategies on engaging the budget cycle to foster increased service delivery for citizens.

The event was held on 13th November 2019, where participants were enlightened on the budget process, stages, with emphasis on performance against allocation. Examples of performance trends for 2015 to 2018 and half year of 2019 were given for 5 sectors – Agriculture, Education, Health, Environment, and Infrastructure. While facilitating the session, the Deputy Director Budget assured that the 2019 third-quarter budget performance report will be uploaded on the MoPB website as soon as possible.

Representatives of Community-Based Organisations at the session

 A review of the 4-year trend on budget performance in Education revealed that percentage allocation against expenditure has improved commendably. Participants were informed that the 2020 allocation for Education presented to the Kano State House of Assembly (KSHoA) is 25.5% of the total budget, exceeding the UNESCO recommendation. A call was made to Kano State Government for improvement in actual budget performance in Health, Environment and Infrastructure even though budgetary allocation for Education, Health and Agriculture have increased steadily over the years.

Some key learnings/findings from the session include:

• improved collaboration between sector MDAs and the Bureau of Statistics will help in developing realistic key performance indicators (KPIs) and provide relevant statistics for measuring budget performance;
• the need for citizens groups to harmonize all observations and speak with one voice at the forthcoming public hearing on 2020 Zero-draft Budget;
• 2018 budget allocation for people with special needs was disbursed as empowerment grant to PWDs;
• one key review on the disability law by the KSHoA is for the establishment of a Commission, manned by persons with special needs and answerable directly to the Governor;
• the need to strengthen the umbrella for citizens groups in Kano;
• Citizens groups need to strengthen engagement with the House Committees of the MDAs to anchor citizens priorities;
• inclusion of timelines in the budget and timely preparation of quarterly budget performance will help improve budget performance;
• considering the strides Kano State has achieved in budget preparations, citizens are less concerned with increase in allocations and more interested in implementation;
• Ministry for Local Government commits to sustaining the application of ceilings obtained from the Economic and Financial Update/Medium Term Expenditure Framework for local governments in budget preparation.

Secretary Appropriation Committee Kano State House of Assembly, Mal Nasiru Magaji, making a comment at the session

The Kano State government was applauded for making commendable strides in improving its fiscal management systems in line with the World Bank SFTAs indicators; this will earn the State access to additional finances to implement reforms. The forum was widely attended by Government actors from the Ministry of Planning and Budget, Office of the Auditor General, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Local Government, Bureau of Statistics, etc. and representatives of Kano State House of Assembly, Civil Society Organisations, Community Based Organisations, Traditional Institutions, Academia, People with Disabilities, etc.