The Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development is proposing to spend a scandalous sum of N795, 234, 275million annually for its website update, according to a document from the budget office of the Federal Ministry of Finance currently trending on twitter.
The sum allocated for website update is about N200million lower than what was budgeted for the development of the Solid Mineral Sector in the same Ministry.
It cost less than N200, 000 monthly to update website such as Pointblanknews.com and other big news websites with huge files.
Minister of mines and steel development, kayode Fayemi, had revealed that that the nation’s solid mineral sector was allocated only N1billion in the 2015 budget.
He further revealed that of the N1billion, only N352million was released to the ministry and its several agencies.
Speaking at the inaugural media briefing in Abuja on Monday, December 21, Fayemi said over the past 5 years,the total capital allocation to the ministry and its agencies in the federal budget had been less than
N10billion.
Fayemi lamented that “equally access to finance has been practically non- existent from the banking industry. Indeed as at today,the banking sectors exposure to the sector is less than 1 per cent of its total portfolio which demonstrates the limited focus on the sector,” he said.
As a means of addressing these challenges the minister assured that he would seek for funding similar to the NIRSAL funds in the nation’s agriculture sector to help in funding exploration and other mining activities.
According to him, based on current data, Nigeria’s solid minerals sector makes up about 0.34 per cent of the gross domestic product(GDP) adding that based on current official exchange rates,the mining sector
contributes N400b illion value to the economy.
