The Technical Adviser to the Director General, Ministry of Budget and National Planning has revealed plans to launch a budget implementation monitoring portal are currently underway.

Mr. Okoh made the revelation while speaking at a workshop organized by the Accountability Lab Nigeria and Open Society Foundations on communications, tax, and budget monitoring.

He said further that the portal would enable citizens to contribute their quota to budget implementation by getting them engaged in the process.

In his own words, “The budget is a function of revenue and expenditure and if you do not have enough money, then you have a deficit budget and Nigeria have been running a deficit budget for a long time,

“We are over depending on oil revenue and the government is now looking on how to diversify its revenue.

“The Ministry of Finance is looking at an initiative called Strategic Revenue Growth Initiative, which focuses on how to improve on non-oil collections and one of this is to expand the tax base of the country.

 “We have a higher level of implementation of the budget because when more monies are collected, we have more revenue to fund the budget.”

While speaking at the event, Mr. Jude Oketta, Consultant for Azziki Brands said there is a need for citizens to get engaged in budget implementation in order to expand the scope of feedback.

He added that the budget ministry will take advantage of the accessibility of mobile technology to connect with the citizens.

“The budget office is actually taking that step to see how we can leverage technology and bring citizens closer to the people through more engagement.

“We are looking that at the end of May and the first week of June to launch the app, to sensitize people on it, we are focusing on civil society and we hope to involve everybody on it,” he said.