Leon Usigbe
13 October 2008
THE inability of the Senate and the House of Representatives to agree on the final figures in the 2008 Budget Amendment Bill which has been pending before the National Assembly for over three months, may have delayed the submission of the 2008 Supplementary Budget proposed by President Umaru Yar'Adua.
Both chambers had set up a Joint Conference Committee to resolve their differences on the amendment but several months on, they have been unable to find a common ground on the N2.6 trillion budget.
President Yar'Adua had indicated that he would submit a supplementary budget specifically for infrastructural development that was not covered in the 2008 budget.
Following the receipt of the amendment Bill in August, members of the House of Representatives had deferred their annual vacation for two weeks to enable them consider and approve the amendment. The Senate had proceeded on break at the time.
The Senate has since approved a different version of the amendment passed by the House and both chambers have up till now failed to harmonise their positions.
The joint conference committee will attempt to resolve the differences today when they meet in what a source yesterday said would be their final meeting.
Chairman, House Committee on Finance, Mr. John Eno, confirmed the lingering differences between the two chambers to Vanguard yesterday. He was optimistic today's meeting would resolve the imbroglio.
He said the disagreement had to do with "internal details" of the budget as both chambers were agreed on the overall figure, a situation he said, made it more difficult to resolve the issues concerning the budget amendment.
"It has to do with internal details. In the past when the figures disagreed, we would meet and pick and trim because you wanted to have some common figure. In this case, we have common figures but those details are taking some bit of more time than we had thought," he said, adding: "We have not been able to come up with one version yet.
The Harmonisation Committee has not been able to come up with one version yet. We have another meeting tomorrow (today) hoping that the final meeting will come up with one version of the Bill.
"In the past, when there were disagreements in the budget, the issues had been more about the entire figure passed by both chambers, the amount. For the first time, we have a unique situation in our hands in which the figures passed by both the House and the Senate appear to be the same," he said.
On the delay in the submission of the supplementary budget, the Committee chairman said there was a connection between the pending amendment Bill and the delay in the submission of the proposed supplementary budget but added that if the supplementary budget was, as previously planned by the President, to take care of infrastructure, then the delay had no bearing with it.
He said: "Don't forget that when the House worked on this budget, the Senate was on recess. That itself is a factor that is showing its hands in terms of the delay.
"Of course there must be a connection between this budget and the supplementary budget that the executive wants to bring. I believe that it may actually be affecting work on the supplementary budget but not the supplementary budget that we were told at the beginning of the year that was coming.
"Remember, the initial supplementary budget that the President said he was sending to the National Assembly had to do with a supplementary budget that was going to address infrastructure issues.
"But if it is supplementary budget in that respect, the delay of the passage in the National Assembly has nothing to do with it because that supplementary budget was supposed to address its own independent issues that were not covered by the 2008 budget as it is now," the Finance Committee chairman said.
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