Victor Ezeja
AdminIn line with President Bola Tinubu’s call on the National Assembly to pass the 2024 budget before the 31st of December to keep up with the January-December budget cycle, the Senate on Saturday passed the 2024 Appropriation Bill, jacking up the sum by N1.2 trillion to N28.7 trillion.
Prime Business Africa recalls that President Tinubu had presented the N27.5 trillion money bill to a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday, 29th of November, 2023.
At the time, he urged the legislature to be thorough and conclude the budget with “reasonable dispatch”, stressing that “our goal is for the Appropriation Act to come into effect on the 1st of January 2024.”
The budget passed third reading on Saturday following a voice vote by the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio. In the passed bill, the sum of 1,742,786,788,150 was earmarked for statutory transfers, 8,270,960,606,831 for debt servicing, 8,768, 513, 380, 852 for recurrent expenditure while 9,995,143,143,298,028 was for capital expenditure.
Before passing the budget, the Senate had considered the report of the Appropriation Bill presented by the Chairman of the Appropriation Committee, Senator Adeola Solomon.
The upper legislative chambers explained that in order to accommodate further requests from the Executive for additional funding, the Committee on Appropriation made some adjustments to the bill.
Some of the adjustments made include foreign exchange differential, increase of Government-Owned Enterprises’ (GOEs’) revenue, GOE’s personnel reduction, Service Wide vote (wage adjustment) and reduction from Service Wide.
The executive arm of government had pegged the budget deficit for the 2024 fiscal year at N9.18 trillion. Tinubu stated that the deficit represents 3.88 per cent of Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP).
According to him, “The N9.18 trillion deficit is lower than the “N13.78 trillion naira deficit recorded in 2023 which represents 6.11 per cent of GDP.
“The deficit will be financed by new borrowings totalling N7.83tn, N298.49BN from Privatization Proceeds and 1.05 trillion naira drawdown on multilateral and bilateral loans secured for specific development projects.”
Christened the ‘Budget of Renewed Hope’, President Tinubu had assured that the money bill would ensure micro-economic stability, poverty reduction, greater access to social security, amongst others.
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