|
|
Nigeria: Yar'Adua Seeks 2008 Budget's Amendment
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Daily Trust (Abuja)
3 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Abdul-Rahman Abubakar and Tashikalmah Hallah
Abuja
A bill seeking to amend the 2008 budget law sent by President Umaru Musa Yar'adua to the National Assembly yesterday is seeking to further reduce the budget figure by about N200 billion.
The new figure proposed by the president in the 2008 Budget Amendment bill is N2.5 trillion as against N2.7 trillion passed by the National Assembly in March, which received executive assent in April, 2008. The President's letter dated June 26, which conveyed the amendment bill, was read on the Senate floor by Senate President David Mark.
 |
|
Francois Gouahinga/allAfrica.com President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. |
President Yar'adua had on November 8, 2007 presented a budget proposal of N2.4 trillion to the National Assembly, but the legislature hiked the figure to N2.8 trillion. After a long period of stalemate owing to the president's objection to the increases, the budget was reduced to N2.7 trillion. The president however raised concern on some items included in the budget by the legislature, causing more delays in its passage. An agreement was later reached between the President and the National Assembly leadership to sign the budget into law and later present an amendment to the 2008 Appropriation Act.
In the amendment bill, Yar'adua presented N714 billion as Capital Expenditure, N1.3 trillion as Recurrent Expenditure, N372 billion to be spent on Debt Services and N162 billion for Statutory Transfers.
The 2008 Appropriation Act earlier signed into law totalled N2.748 trillion, comprising N860 billion as Capital Expenditure and N1.888 trillion was to be spent as Recurrent Expenditure. Some key sectors of the economy which are to have their budgets slashed include Education, Energy, Agriculture, Defence and Transportation.
President Yar'adua told the National Assembly that "Consistent with the Seven-Point Agenda of our administration, the 2008 Appropriation Amendment Bill focuses on the provision of infrastructure, particularly in the Energy and Transportation sectors and the FCT; as well as Food Security, Defence and Security.
"I firmly believe that this targeted spending proposal will further stimulate economic growth and improve service delivery to our people within the context of a stable macroeconomic environment."
In line with the policy, the president has proposed a capital spending for the key sectors including Education, which got N47.9 Billion, Transportation is to receive N103.8 Billion; Energy got N120.7billion, Defence N22.9 Billion while Agriculture and Water Resources will now get N97.6 Billion.
Under recurrent expenditure, Agriculture and Water Resources gets N23.9 Billion, Ministry of Defence N143.1 Billion, Education gets N157.1 Billion, Transportation receives N31.2 Billion while Energy will gulp N25.5 Billion.
The Federal Legislative Arm is to now receive N97.3 Billion for recurrent expenditure and N15.5 Billion as capital expenditure. Payment of Domestic Debts will take N306.2 Billion while Foreign Debts get N66 Billion. Yar'adua has also pruned down spending in federal executive bodies to N4.035 Billion.
In his amendment proposal, the president said the long title of the bill should read, "A Bill for an Act to authorize the Issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation the total sum of N2, 567,489,865,645 (Two Trillion, Five Hundred and Sixty Seven Billion, Four Hundred and Eighty Nine Million, Eight Hundred and Sixty Five Thousand, Six Hundred and Forty Five Naira) only..." It could be recalled that the National Assembly had on March 13, 2008 agreed to the request by Yar'Adua by reviewing the budget downwards to N2.7 Trillion from N2.89 Trillion as passed on February 12, 2008.
|
A total of N150 Billion was reduced from the N2.89 trillion earlier passed by the National Assembly as expenditure of the federal government for 2008 fiscal year and sent for the president's assent.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
