Follow Us on Google
…As GEOs promise to increase revenue
From Ndubuisi Orji and Fred Itua, Abuja
The National Assembly, yesterday, passed a budget of N 28, 777, 404, 073,861 for the 2024 fiscal year. The budget, which was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, after the report of the Appropriation Committees were considered and approved in the Committee on Supply in the two chambers, was increased by N1.2 trillion.
President Bola Tinubu, in the Appropriation Bill, presented to the joint session of the National Assembly, on November 29, had proposed a total of N27,503,404,073,861 for the 2024 fiscal year.
A breakdown of the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly indicates that N1, 742,786, 788,150 is for statutory transfers; N8, 270, 960,606,831, debt servicing; N8, 768, 513, 380, 852, recurrent (non debt) expenditure and N9,995, 143,298,028 as contribution to development fund for capital expenditure.
For statutory transfers, the National Judicial Council got the sum of N341,625,739,236 ; Niger-Delta Development Commission ( NDDC) N338,924,732,832, 28 ; Universal Basic Education Commission ( UBEC) N263,043,551,250, 29; Senate N49,144,916,519; House of Representatives, N78,624,487,169. For the Presidency N97,913,321,898, 40 and N82,922,332,768,163 was approved for recurrent and capital respectively.
Also, the Ministry of Defence got N1,308,493,771,066, 41 as recurrent and N339,286,557,299 for capital; Ministry of Works got N39,374,777,404, 68 and N892,461,262,656,191 for recurrent and capital expenditure respectively.
Similarly, Ministry of Education got N857,134,132,339, 80 for recurrent and N417,579,107,875, 203 for capital.
The Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Abubakar Bichi, while giving a synopsis of the Appropriation Bill, explained the committee held a one-way town hall meeting to get the inputs of citizens on the Appropriation Bill.
Nevertheless, Bichi noted the presentation of the budget by the end of November was not in sync with extant law, which requires the Appropriation Bill to be presented to the parliament three months to the end of a fiscal year.
According to him, the late presentation of the Appropriation Bill put pressure on the committee in processing the 2024 budget.
Bichi, while fielding questions from journalists, explained that the N1.2 trillion increase, in the budget was because of inflation as well as promise by Government Owned Enterprises (GOEs) to increase their revenue to N700 billion.
He said: “We have inflation and exchange rate for the dollar, the executive proposed N750 to the dollar, but after we studied carefully, we looked at it, saw that it is unrealistic.
“So we increased to N800. And also we had a meeting with the GOEs, we believe that their submissions were not enough. They have agreed to increase their revenue. That is how we are able to get that 1.2 trillion, which we applied to capital.
“This is the first time the capital is bigger than recurrent. We appropriated about N850 billion, education, we gave them a lot of money. I believe this budget is brilliant and Nigerians will see a lot of impacts.”
