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  • Aug 1st, 2004
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Nigeria has already implemented 46 percent of its 2004 budget, President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Saturday, dousing public concern that as in previous years the government will spend less than it pledged.

"Bearing in mind that the budget did not even get passed until March, achieving 46 percent by the middle of June is good," Obasanjo said on his monthly phone-in programme on state radio.

The passage of the so-called 2004 appropriation bill was delayed by a protracted row between Obasanjo and Nigeria's American-styled legislature over who controls spending.

The dispute which had threatened planned tough economic reforms aimed at turning around decades of corruption and mismanagement in the world's seventh largest oil exporter, was resolved after the lawmakers toned down a proposal to create a separate account for excess oil earnings.

While signing what he described as a "balanced budget" in April, Obasanjo pledged to implement the proposals by at least 80 percent. Last year, OPEC-member Nigeria actually paid out less than half of it's budget pledges.

Copyright Reuters, 2004


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