A member of the board? of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Professor Samuel Olofin has said that it was not possible for the bank to submit its total budget to the National Assembly for scrutiny because there may be expenses midway into the implementation of the budget of the year that may not have been anticipated at the beginning.
This is as a call has been made for the CBN Act 2007 to be enshrined in the Nigerian constitution to forestall any temptation to tamper with the Act based on personal grouse.
Olofin who spoke in Akure yesterday said that some costs like salaries can be determined at the beginning of the year but that this might not be the case for issues like Open Market Operations, (OMO).
He said: “ there are different components of the CBN budget, for example the bank knows how much it will spend on salaries of staff at the beginning of the year, but the same cannot be said if funds are needed to rescue a bank.
“Those are some of the emergencies that could arise after the budget has been signed into law. It is now then the duty of the CBN board which has been empowered by the National Assembly to approve a supplementary budget so that a crisis can be averted”.