Seven months after, NASS passes 2018 budget

The two arms of the National Assembly, has passed the 2018 budget, raising it by N500 billion. Both arms approved a budget that rose from N8.6 trillion to N9.1 trillion, seven months after it was presented by the executive.

President Muhammadu Buhari presented the budget to a joint session of the National Assembly on November 7, 2017. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate, on Tuesday, received the budget reports of their appropriation committees.

At the Senate, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje, said the increase of N500 billion was done in consultation with the executive.

He said the increment was informed by a decision to increase oil benchmark from the proposed N45 to N51. The exchange rate of N305 to a dollar and production of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day was adopted as proposed by the executive. Goje said the funds accruing from the increment will be spent on some projects already earmarked by the committee. He said the surplus fund was spread on some ‘critical sectors’ in consultation with the executive. He further gave a breakdown of the additional fund to be spent on different sectors.

According to the report, N42.72billion will be spent on security, N57. 15 billion on the 1 per cent vote for health as mandated by the National Health Act, N106.50b billion for the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. Other areas are; education, N15.7 billion, Judiciary, N10 billion and Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), N44.20billion. He added that the increment will allow for a N50.88 billion deficit reduction. In the final breakdown, the Senate passed a 2018 budget of N9, 120, 334, 988, 225 of which N530, 421, 368, 624 is for statutory transfers as against N456, 458, 654, 074 proposed by the executive.

The committee also said, N2, 203, 835, 365, 699 was budgeted for debt service as proposed, while N190, 000, 000, 000 was budgeted for sinking fund for maturing loans. Similarly, N3, 512, 677, 902, 077 was earmarked for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure with a slight increment from N3, 494, 277, 820, 219 proposed and N2, 873, 400, 351, 825 was budgeted for capital expenditure as against N2, 427, 665, 113, 222. The budget will have a fiscal deficit of N1, 954, 464, 993, 775 and a deficit to GDP of -1.73 per cent.

Reps explain budget jerk up Meanwhile, the House has provided some insight into the jerking up of the budget. Briefing journalists just after the budget was passed yesterday , Chairman of the House Committee and Public Affairs, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, said part of the reason was the drastic reduction of the deficit in the initial budget by over N50 billion.

According to him, the N9.120 billion aggregate expenditure has been predicated on the assumptions of $51 dollar per barrel crude oil price benchmark against the $45 proposed in the initial budget, crude oil production of 2.3 million barrels per day, and an exchange rate of N305 per dollar. Earlier, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, Hon. Mustapha Dawaki, while also explaining to his colleagues on how his committee’s final recommendations were arrived at, said after consultation with the Executive, the increase in oil price benchmark was applied in the “critical sectors of the economy,” highlighted above.

Leave a Reply