Reps begin debate on MTEF, 2018 budget debate begins next week
The House of Representatives on Tuesday fixed November 28 to begin the debate on the 2018 budget. The debate will last till Thursday.
The Deputy Speaker of the House, Mr. Yussuff Lasun, who gave the dates during plenary in Abuja, said on December 4, a public hearing would be held on the budget to gather the input of other Nigerians on the financial proposals.
However, today Wednesday, lawmakers will begin deliberations on the 2018-2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, which was earlier sent to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari before he laid the estimates of the budget on November 7.
The MTEF lays out the income and expenditure plans of the Federal Government over the next three years.
By the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, the MTEF must first be approved by the National Assembly before any budget is passed.
Lasun directed lawmakers to pick copies of the budget estimates from the office of the Committee on Appropriation led by Mr. Mustapha Bala-Dawaki for perusal ahead of Tuesday’s debate.
He noted that the House was working towards granting the President’s request to have the budget passed in January 2018 so that the country could revert to the January-December budget cycle.
“Members should pick up their copies of the budget and study the items carefully. On November 28, we shall all gather here to start the debate. This is an important issue, so let us treat it seriously,” Lasun added.
The President laid a budget proposal of ₦8.612tn before the legislators for next year on November 7.
The figure is higher than the 2017 budget of ₦7.44tn by ₦1.17tn or 16 per cent.
From the proposed amount for 2018, the President said recurrent costs would be ₦3.494tn, while ₦2.652tn or 30.8 per cent was earmarked for capital expenditure.
He added that debt servicing would gulp ₦2.014tn, while statutory transfers would cost ₦456bn.
The amount earmarked as Sinking Fund to retire maturing bonds to local contractors was ₦220bn.
On the statutory transfers, Buhari had explained that ₦456.46bn was provided in the 2018 budget for statutory transfers, adding, “The five per cent increase over last year’s provision is mainly due to increases in transfers to the Niger Delta Development Commission and the Universal Basic Education Commission, which are related directly to the size of oil revenue.”
The budget came with a deficit of ₦2.005tn, a drop from the ₦2.36tn contained in the 2017 budget, or 1.77 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.
Meanwhile, the Senate has criticised the key assumptions in the 2018 Appropriation Bill and the 2018-2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper as being unrealistic.
Members of the joint Senate Joint Committee on the MTEF, at an interactive session with officials of the Federal Government in Abuja on Tuesday, took turns to condemn the proposals, saying successive administrations had failed to averagely implement the country’s budgets due to too ambitious targets.
The panel is made up of the Senate committees on Appropriations, Finance and National Planning.
Officials of the Federal Government at the session were the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmad; Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze; and Director-General, Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha.
Earlier in her presentation, Ahmad said some adjustments had been made to the MTEF and FSP earlier presented to the National Assembly.
The adjustments, she said, included “₦710bn to be generated from the restructuring of government’s equity in all the Joint Venture oil assets; and ₦320bn additional revenues from revision of terms to improve government’s take in the production sharing contracts.”
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