BREAKING NEWS, Business
–
THE Senate on Wednesday, March 23, finally passed the long awaited 2016 budget submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari. The 2016 Budget of N6,060,677,358,277 was reduced by N17,002,641,773. While presenting a report, Danjuma Goje, chairman, Senate committee on appropriation said the budget was filled with controversy. He further claimed that there were many lapses in the budget and in the bid for the Senate to clear up the issues would add more problems. He said if the Senate insisted on clearing up the lapses, the committee would not have been able to meet up with the deadline of submission.
“This budget is full of controversy and we did not want to have more controversy or else it won’t have been presented today and the National Assembly would be blamed. The people would not understand it because people are even saying that we are playing politics,” Goje said.
However, Ike Ekweremadu, deputy Senate president, while making contributions commended the committee and also urged for the lapses to be addressed.
On Tuesday, December 22, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari laid before a joint sitting of the National Assembly the 2016 appropriation bill. The bill contained the estimates of revenue and expenditure of the federation for the 2016 fiscal year in the aggregate sum of six trillion. The Senate debated the bill on January 20, 21, 26 and 27 respectively. The bill was read a second time on January 27, and consequently referred to the committee on appropriations for further legislative actions.
In preparing details of the bill, the committee adopted a benchmark price of 38 dollars per barrel on crude oil based on the Medium Term Expenditure framework, MTEF, and Fiscal Strategy Paper, FSP. The executive proposals of crude oil production of 2.2 million barrels per day and an exchange rate of 197 naira to one dollar was adopted. After which the highlight of the bill as recommended by the committee was an aggregate expenditure of 6.06 trillion naira.
— Mar 23, 2016 @ 14:55 GMT
|
Tags:
