The Senate, yesterday, approved the N4.493 trillion budget for the 2015 fiscal year, the same figure passed by the House of Representatives last Thursday.
The budget is N51 billion higher than the N4.425 trillion submitted to both chambers of the National Assembly by the federal government. Just like the House of Representatives, N21 billion was provided for the funding of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).
The lawmakers reduced the N2.607, 601, 000, 300 proposed by the executive for recurrent expediture to N2.607, 132,491,708 and scaled down the capital expenditure from N642,848,999,699 to N556,995,465,449. Briefing Senate correspondents on the budget, the chairman, Joint Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance, Mohammed Maccido, explained that the details of the figure approved by the Senate was same as that passed by the House of Representatives last week, adding that the executive did not make provision for subsidy in the 2015 budget and that the National Assembly left it the way it was presented.
He said, “There was no provision in the budget for subsidy but I believe there should be provision for it, especially since there was already a disagreement between the oil marketers and the federal government over subsidy payment.”
He added that the budget will be driven by the $53 oil benchmark, an exchange rate of N190 to one dollar, 2.2782 million per barrel crude oil production per day, and deficit gross domestic product (GDP) of -1.12 per cent. According to the approved 2015 budget details, the Niger Delta Development Commission’s allocation was earmarked at N46.720 billion, Universal Basic Education N68.380 billion, National Assembly N120 billion, Public Complaint Commission N4 billion, and National Human Right Commission N1.516 billion.
N73 billion was set aside for the National Judicial Council and N62 billion for the Independent National Electoral Commission. A breakdown of the final amount passed showed that N375.616 billion is for statutory transfer, N953.620 is for debt service, N2,607,132,491,708 is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while N556,995,465,449 is for capital expenditure in statutory transfer, inclusive of the N144.420 billion for the contribution to the development fund capital expenditure.
From the total sum of N2,007,775,136,033 approved for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, Education gets the highest allocation of N392,242,784,654 followed by Defence/MOD; Army/Air; Force/Navy with N338,797,219,431 and Police formation and Commands with N303,822,224,611 while the sum of N237,075,742,847 is for Health sector.
