The Nigerian Senate today, April 30th, 2019, passed the 2019 Appropriation Bill during a plenary session headed by the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki. The passage follows the presentation of a report by the chairman Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje.
The Budget Is About N86 Billion Increased From The Initial Draft Presented In December.
The N8.916 trillion 2019 budget initially presented to a joint session of the National Assembly on December 19, 2018 increased by about N86 billion from N8.83 trillion by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Mr Goje, while presenting his report, said the need to make available the severance benefits of outgoing lawmakers, their aides, provision for the National Assembly orientation programme, election, and others accounted for the about N86 billion increase.
He further stated that “There is also the need to provide more fund for the security and intelligence agencies to deal with additional, emerging, unforeseen challenges in the country”. These, he said were not captured in the 2019 budget presented to the house by the president.
The Breakdown Of The Major Components Of 2019 Appropriation Bill.
The Senate passed the budget with the breakdown analysis as follows:
Statutory transfers – N502.58 billion
Debt service – N2.25 trillion
Recurrent expenditure – N4.65 trillion
Capital expenditure – N2.94 trillion
Additional Information On The Approved Budget.
The Senate, in an additional recommendation, approved a N10 billion fund which is to be drawn from service-wide votes to support victims of Zamfara crisis. However, the Senate had, in one of its plenaries, approved the special fund.
In addition to the above, a daily oil production rate of 2.3 million barrels, at $60 per barrel was also adopted, as suggested by the executive. The Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) earlier presented by the lawmakers was also adopted.
Senate Charged The Executive On Budget Implementation.
The Senate at the moment communicated changes made to the budget to the House of Representatives to ensure there is no conference committee which could further delay the passage.
The Senate President Bukola Saraki, who thanked his colleagues and charged the executive on implementation of the budget, said, “We hope that with this budget passed, the executive will ensure full implementation for the benefit of all Nigerians.”
The Senate, thereafter, adjourned for an hour to allow the secretariat to make available votes and proceedings of the day to allow speedy transmission of the bill to the president.
2018 Budget Versus 2019 Budget
The 2019 budget amount, N8.916 trillion, is a 2.24% decrease from the 2018 budget amount of N9.120 trillion, itself a 23.6% increase from the 2017 figure.
According to the proposed budget of the 2019 fiscal year, the Federal Government projects about N3.73 trillion as oil revenues. This figure was derived from two assumptions:
- That in the year, oil will sell at an estimated $60 per barrel; and,
- That oil production will hit 2.3 million barrels per day.
A daily crude oil production estimate of 2.3 million barrels per day is same as was estimated for the 2018 fiscal year. However, Nigeria presently produces about 1.8 million barrels per day which some experts in the oil sector believe should have been a more realistic production estimate.
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