BREAKING NEWS, Business
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THE federal government on Monday, December 7, said it would make a budget proposal of N6 trillion with 30 percent going to capital expenditure.
The proposed budget would be predicated on crude oil selling at $38 per barrel and crude oil production of 2.2 million barrel per day.
The Federal Executive Council, FEC, which made decision also approved the submission of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, to the National Assembly.
Briefing State House correspondents after an emergency meeting of the FEC, presided by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Monday, Udoma Udo Udoma, minister of National Planning and Budget, made the disclosure said that the budget all the increases were necessitated by the need to increase the capital because of the infrastructure issues that needed to be addressed.
“We are projecting almost 30 percent capital project, up from the 15 percent or so that is in the current budget. We will try and reduce overheads, but keep personnel cost in check. We are not going to adjust it by much, but we are expecting some savings from the IPPIS system which we are using. So, we are not cutting anybody’s salary, everybody will get their salaries.
“Following from this, the MTEF will be submitted to the National Assembly, and we expect a feedback from them, thereafter we will be working to try and get the budget finalized, it when the budget is finalized that you really see the details of what we intend to do. This is just a medium term economic framework.”
On the funding for the budget, he said the government was looking at two sources. “We are looking at trying to increasing our non-oil revenue. We are looking at trying to get more money from the various government agencies, policing their collection and trying to get more money from them. We will also look at keeping down our recurrent budget that means we are looking at savings that we can make from overheads.
“We will look at the efficiencies from our revenue collecting agencies like the FIRS, in terms of company income tax, in terms of VAT, and then the difference, we will have to borrow. But the level of borrowing that we anticipate will be well within the maximum allowed, which is three per cent of the GDP, because we want a prudent budget. We want a credible budget. So, we are working on that now.
“So we are not cutting anybody’s salary everybody will get their salaries, “he said.
— Dec 8, 2015 @ 16:20 GMT
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