Polictics:- Senate passes N4.695 trillion budget

Senate passes N4.695 trillion budget

The Senate, on Wednesday, passed the 2014 budget, four months after its presentation to the National Assembly.
The budget, totaling N4.695 trillion, is N52.2 billion higher than the N4.642 trillion submitted to the lawmakers on December 19, 2013 through the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The lawmakers, at the Wednesday sitting, had considered the report of the Appropriation Committee headed by Senator Ahmed Maccido, which recommended the passage of the budget bill and passed the same after a clause by clause consideration.

A breakdown of the budget indicated that the sum of  N408,687,801,891 was approved for statutory transfers, while debts service would gulp N712 billion. Recurrent Expenditure was put at N2,454,887,566,702, while capital votes stood at N1,119,614,631,407.

Senate President, David Mark, who presided over the plenary, thanked his colleagues for passing the budget, while also urging the Federal Government to ensure its implementation.

While presenting the report of his committee to the Senate on Wednesday, Senator Maccido said it adopted a benchmark price of $77.50 per barrel of crude oil, as well as the production figure of 2.38 million barrels per day and an exchange rate of N160 to $1.

He called for a retooling of the 2014-2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) upon which the 2014 budget rested, adding that the issue of planning needed to be taken into adequate consideration.

He noted that the drops in the volume of oil production and budget implementation challenges were some of the concerns of his committee.
Also on Wednesday, the Senate passed the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program  (SURE-P) component of the budget, which was added to its final figures.

The Senators passed the sum of N268,370,000,000 as SURE-P funds for 2014.