Budget Implementation and Human Capital Development in Nigeria

Abstract

The issues of low literacy rate, reduction in gross enrolment rate, low life expectancy at birth and increase in infant mortality rate have been attributed to low or lack of adequate budget implementation in the key sectors namely: education, health, agriculture and science and technology which are considered relevant to human capital development by the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) and it is a common phenomenon affecting development in all Africa economies. It is expected that when the budget is implemented fully, it will drive human capital development components in these sectors. Therefore, the study examines the nexus between budget implementation and human capital development in Nigeria. We used data of education, health, agriculture and science and technology sectors ranging from 2003 to 2019. Evidence from Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model showed that budget implementations in health, agriculture, technology, had positive and significant effect on human capital development in the short run. The results further showed that in the long run, budget implementation in agriculture had positive and significant effect on human capital development. The study recommended that budget implementations in these sectors should be given utmost priorities and performed with focus on achieving human capital development.