… As Reps okay N10.8tr
The Senate will on Thursday, June 11, consider the revised 2020 budget.
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, gave the hint on Wednesday during plenary after the Committee on Appropriation laid the report on the 2020 revised budget.
“Tomorrow, we can receive and consider the report to ensure that we don’t delay anything as important as that. So, this is the essence of altering the order paper,” Lawan said.
The Senate on Tuesday deferred presentation of the report over a delay by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to provide details for the sum of N186 billion, an amount which is part of the N500 billion COVID-19 intervention fund.
Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Barau Jibrin, on Tuesday had explained to his colleagues that the Finance Ministry was yet to comply with the request of the Committee by attaching necessary details for the amount to be captured as part of the 2020 budget amendment bill.
However, Lawan, disclosed on Wednesday that the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning had complied with the request of the Appropriations Committee by providing the relevant details for the outstanding N186 billion.
The development, according to him, makes it expedient for the upper chamber to consider the revised 2020 budget on Thursday during plenary.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, on Wednesday, passed the revised 2020 Appropriation Bill, increasing the national budget from the planned N10.5 trillion to N10.8 trillion.
Earlier, the executive arm had sought to reduce the federal budget from N10.6 trillion to N10.5 trillion before the lawmakers upped it to N10.8 trillion on Wednesday.
The proposed cut was premised on the global economic realities resulting from the coronavirus crisis and the crash in the prices of crude at the international oil market.
Even though the House of Representatives Committees on Appropriations and Finance, whose report was considered and adopted at Wednesday’s plenary recommended N10,801,544,664,642, the lawmakers added the sum of N4 billion for the welfare of National Association of Resident Doctors’ members who have threatened to commence strike next week.
The consideration and passage of the bill came a little after Mukhtar Betara, Chair of the House Committee on Appropriation, presented the committee report on the budget.
Based on the revised budget passed by the lower parliament, statutory transfers known as the first line of charge (the category into which the National Assembly budget belongs) was lifted from N398,505,979,362 to N422,775,979,362.
Recurrent expenditure accounts for N4.942 trillion of the entire budget sum while debt servicing for this year is expected to gulp N2.488 trillion. N2.4 trillion will go to capital expenditure.
Femi Gbajabiamila, the Speaker, told the House that it was revealed to him during his meeting with resident doctors that the doctors planned to commence a strike next Monday.
He affirmed that he was not prepared to back any budget without it making an allocation for the implementation of the 2017 Resident Doctors Act, adding that N4 billion was required for this purpose.
“Yesterday I met with the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors who will be going on strike on Monday. Their major issue is that the Resident Doctor Act passed in 2017 has not been implemented. We have not included them in the new budget.”
The House similarly endorsed President Muhammadu Buhari’s request for a $5.5 billion external loan to fund the 2020 budget.
The approval came after the consideration of the report of the House Committee on Loan and Debt Management by the Committee on Supply.
Ahmed Safana, Chair of the Committee on Loan and Debt Management, stated that the loan, which would be sourced from bilateral and multilateral lenders, would not increase Nigeria’s debt portfolio beyond the 25% threshold.