Budget for 2016 passed finally; #6tn

After a three-month delay, the National Assembly Wednesday passed the 2016 budget of N6.060 trillion, the first that will be implemented from scratch by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, thus laying to rest the numerous controversies which trailed its presentation by the president last December. According to Thisday news, The budget that was passed by the legislature had a reduction of N17 billion from the N6.077 trillion proposed by the executive.Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje, while presenting the budget report to the Senate, said never in the history of the National Assembly since 1999, has an annual budget witnessed more cuts as was the case with this year’s budget.

He blamed the budgetary cuts on the country’s economic challenges, explaining that cuts were made in recurrent spending, the budget deficit and borrowing plan.

While some senators expressed concern about the reduction in recurrent expenditure, saying it may affect the payment of salaries, Goje explained that provisions had been made under service wide votes to take care of the federal government’s wage bill.

The budget as passed wednesday, contained N2.646 trillion for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure; N1.587 trillion for capital expenditure; N351.3 trillion for statutory transfers; Nl.475 trillion for debt service and N500 billion for social intervention.

The budget was also predicated on oil benchmark of $38 dollars a day, crude oil production volume of 2.2 million barrel per day crude, exchange rate of N197 to $1, a N2.204 trillion fiscal deficit, and a gross domestic growth (GDP) growth rate of 2.14 per cent.

Under the capital spending plan, the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing got the lion share of N422. 9 billion, this is followed by the Ministry of Transportation with N188.6 billion.

Other allocations are N130.8 billion for the Ministry of Defence; N61.7 billion for Ministry of Interior; N46.1 billion for Ministry of Agriculture, and N35.4 billion for Ministry of Education.

Under recurrent expenditure, the Ministry of Interior got the highest allocation of N451.9 billion, followed by education with N367.7 billion. Other notable allocations are N312 billion to defence and N221.4 billion to health.
While presenting the report, Goje read some provisions of the Appropriation Act including the stipulation that “the Accountant-General of the Federation shall forward to the National Assembly full details of funds released to the government agencies immediately such funds are released”.

The Senate also observed that the budget was presented very late in violation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and advised the executive arm to desist from late presentations of the budget in subsequent years.

It also advised the executive arm to properly engage all its agencies during subsequent preparations of annual budgets to prevent a recurrence of the inconsistencies that characterised the 2016 budget process.

The Senate also advised the federal government to increase and diversify revenue generation streams in view of the noticeable gaps between collectible revenues and actual collections.