The
Senate on Tuesday, passed N4.493tr budget for the 2015 fiscal year,
about five months after it
was presented by the Minister of Finance/Coordinating
Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
The
national budget, which was earlier passed by the House of Representatives last
week, was N51bn higher than the N4.425tr submitted to both chambers of the
National Assembly by the federal government.
The
senate approval of the budget on Tuesday, however confirmed the non inclusion
of fuel subsidy provision in the document but contained N21bn for the funding
of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme.
The
senate, in passing the budget, slightly reduced the N2.607, 601, 000,
300 proposed by the executive to N2.607, 132,491,708 as recurrent
expenditure and simultaneously scaled down the capital expenditure from
N642,848,999,699 estimated in the proposal to N556,995,465,449.
The
Chairman, Joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance, Mohammed
Maccido, explained that the details of the figure approved by senate in the
document were not different from the version passed by the House of
Representatives last week.
He
confirmed that the executive did not make provision for subsidy in the 2015
budget and that the National Assembly left it the way it was presented.
He
said, “There was no provision in the budget for subsidy but I believe there
should be provision for it especially since there was already, a disagreement
between the oil marketers and the federal government over subsidy payment.”
He
added that the budget will be driven by $53 oil benchmark, an exchange rate of
N190.00 to one dollar; 2.2782m per barrel crude oil production per day;
and deficit gross domestic product of -1.12 per cent.
Reacting
to the development, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator
Ahmad Lawan, said the incoming government would definitely review the 2015
fiscal budget because of the various flaws in it.
He
said, “The constitutional provision is that we should have even passed the
budget before now but due to the exigencies of this period, we have just passed
it and we have done our constitutional duty very well.
Senate passes 2015 budget without provision for fuel subsidy
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
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