Wherever a construction project is embarked upon, there always exists some risk inherent elements in it, such as physical risk, environmental risk, logistic risk, financial risk, legal risk, political risk and construction risk among other forms of risks that abound in the investment environment the world over. Traditionally, during the pre-contract stage of a project's life most of these risks are not properly identified and quantified in a bid to effectively manage them. Rather, a contingency sum and insurance cover are allowed in order to accommodate the effect of unforeseen circumstances. However, a study by Pouliquen [3], showed that most of these contingency allowances were based on intuitive guesswork and this explains the attendant high cost over-runs involved and or their implications [4]. Moreover, the conventional way in the construction industry is to present construction cost estimates in deterministic terms usually by a single figure, with quantifications, assumptions and exclusions. Pouliquen [3], stated that the single figure could be saidto "represent the estimator's assessment of uncertainty", but this would be too vague as there is no means whatsoever of ascertaining the risk that exists as to whether the estimate will be exceeded or bettered and by what proportion. This conventional approach that uses single value estimate has posed a lot of problems in construction projects, especially where public spending is involved. This is because there are frequently cost over-runs to the tune the client is not even expecting and there is no way he could determine the likely increases beforehand since the single value estimate would not reveal the degree of risk in the cost estimate [5].
This study investigates the relationship between government recurrent expenditures and economic growth in Nigeria for 18 years: 1999-2016. In doing this, the paper disaggregated government current expenditures into five categories used as explanatory variables. The estimated result showed that influence of government expenditures on national assembly, pensions and gratuities had insignificant effect on economic growth. However, total government expenditures on administration and public debt servicing had a positive and significant effect on economic growth. Also the study revealed that total government expenditures on transfers had insignificant effect on economic growth. Study therefore recommends that annual government recurrent expenditures on administration and public debt servicing should be sustained as they led to economic growth, but that all leakages arising from such spending should be blocked in order to achieve an enhanced growth.
The study examined effect of government agricultural expenditure on agricultural output in Nigeria using time series data from 1981 to 2014. Having analyzed data using unit root test, co-integration test and vector error correction model, results of unit root test showed that all the variables were integrated at the first order difference. On the other hand, the Johansen co-integration tests revealed that a long-run relationship existed between agricultural output and government agricultural expenditure. Going through the vector error correction model results indicated that agricultural output adjusted rapidly to changes in total government agricultural expenditure, real exchange rate, banking system credit to agriculture, average annual rainfall and population growth rate. With respect to individual variables, average annual rainfall and domestic population growth rate were significant at 1 percent levels in affecting agricultural output in Nigeria. While domestic population growth rate lead agricultural output in Nigeria, average annual rainfall followed and then government expenditure, and finally, real exchange rate in their descending order of magnitude. As such, it was recommended that government should not only adequately fund agriculture via maintaining a healthy population but to also encourage a mechanized agricultural system by use of modern technology and inputs to boost yields in local rice production and other farm produce so as to reduce the rate of rice importation in the country. Moreover, government should ensure that meteorological agencies which forecast annual rainfalls are well funded and catered for and that their recommendations be implemented towards achieving high farm yields annually and food self-sufficiency thereby minimizing agricultural losses due to vagaries of weather in our agricultural climate.
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