The Nigerian Senate has approved a N28.7trillion as year 2024 Appropriation Bill, as the national budget after jerking the budget from the N27.5trillion presented by President Bola Tinubu with about N1.2 trillion. The passage of the bill, followed the approval of report of the Senate Committee on Appropriation at plenary yesterday Saturday.
While presenting the report to the committee, the chairman, Solomon Adeola, revealed that the committee adopted the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Paper, MTEF/FSP, approved by National Assembly that made them arrive at the said budget.
Adeola reiterated that the committee adopted the 77.96 dollar per barrel as the oil benchmark produced at 1.78mbpd and 800 dollar exchange rate to naira as against 750 dollars proposed by the executive.
Itemising the highlights of the bill, Adeola explained a total aggregate expenditure of N28.7trillon, with a statutory transfers of N1.7trillion, and recurrent expenditure stood at N8.7 trillion, while the capital expenditure component to gulp N9.9trillon.
He revealed that the committee while processing the bill worked closely with the executive until the final lap of the work.
Although he said that while closely and harmonious working the appropriation process, the executive later forwarded additional request for funding some items on expenditure that were earlier excluded in the bill as at the time it was submitted by the President.
However, Adeola revealed that the committee observed that the 2024 Appropriation Bill was presented to the National Assembly late compared to what was obtainable in the past.
He explained this was against the Fiscal Responsibility Act that required the Bill shall be presented not later than three months before the next financial year.
He pointed out that there were inconsistencies in the revenue of some Government Owned Enterprises, GOEs.
He also said that there was removal of some agencies personnel costs from the Federal Government payroll and inadequate funding in some allocation of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs.
Mr Adeola said to ensure thorough scrutiny of budget proposal; he called on the executives to comply with the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
He added that other extent rules should not be ignored by the executive as it concerns government agencies.
Meanwhile, he called on agencies removed from federal government budget to step up their revenue generation, fund itself and remit more to Consolidated Revenue Fund, CRF.
He also called for provision of additional funds to some MDAs not appropriately captured as it concerns funding.
Adeola called on the executive to sustain the increase on capital component over recurrent to ensure that developmental programmes across the country does not suffer poor funding.