Budget Implementation and Economic Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the effect of budget implementation on the Nigerian economic growth and provides panacea to the problem of budget allocation and its implementation. To achieve this broad goal, the econometric model of ordinary least square (OLS) regression test was employed for analysis and time series data span from 1993 to 2010 was considered. Budget in the public sector of Nigeria has almost become a ritual or a yearly affairs which though good in content but without appreciable result. The issue of budget implementation has long been a source of concern to the public and also considering the important impetus of budget implementation on economic growth and development in Nigeria. The dependent variable was proxied by gross domestic product (GDP), while the independent variables were public total expenditure (PEX), public recurrent expenditure (PRE), public capital expenditure (PCE) and external debt (EXD). The results revealed that budget implementation has a positive effect impact on Nigeria economic growth. The results further showed a positive relationship between GDP and public total expenditure (PEX), public recurrent expenditure (PRE), public capital expenditure, external debt (EXD), while public capital expenditure (PCE) shows a negative relationship to GDP.  The study recommends that government should enact on enabling law that will ensure the workability of its budgets according to plans and increase the proportion of capital expenditure to recurrent expenditure so that the budget can have growth and development inducement among others

Keywords: Budget, Budget implementation, Government policy Public expenditure, Fiscal policy.