From Uche Usim, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday revealed that the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) would fund the deficit in the 2023 Nigeria’s Budget with N206.18 billion through privatisation proceeds.
He made the disclosure while presenting the 2023 budget estimates totalling N20.51 trillion and tagged: Budget of Fiscal Consolidation and Transition to the joint session of the National Assembly.
The president gave other sources of funding the deficit to include new borrowings totalling N8.80 trillion and N1.77 trillion drawdowns on bilateral/multilateral loans secured for specific development projects/programmes. The proposed N20.51 trillion budgets also include statutory transfers (N744.11 billion); non-debt recurrent costs (N8.27 trillion); personnel costs, N4.99 trillion; pensions, gratuities and retirees’ benefits (N854.8 billion); overheads (N1.11 trillion); capital expenditure (N5.35 trillion); debt service (N6.31 trillion); and sinking fund (N247.73 billion) to retire certain maturing bonds.
The President said his administration had in the last seven years transformed Nigeria’s challenging power sector through interventions such as the Siemens Power Programme in collaboration with the German government under which over 2 billion US dollars will be invested in the transmission grid.