The meeting was a follow-up to previous ones held to fine-tune the preparation of the budget ahead of the presentation to a special joint session of the National Assembly by the president next month.
The leadership of the National Assembly on Thursday met with the two ministers in the Finance Ministry, Zainab Ahmed and Clement Agba, and other top officials of the ministry.
The two groups met in preparation for the presentation of the 2023 budget proposals.
Leaders of the National Assembly present at Thursday's meeting were Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.
A statement by the Senate President's media aide, Ola Awoniyi, said the meeting was a follow-up to previous ones held to fine-tune the preparation of the budget ahead of the presentation to a special joint session of the National Assembly by the President next month.
President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to present the 2023 budget proposals to a joint session of the National Assembly in October.
Although details of the meeting, which was held behind closed doors, were not disclosed, Ms Ahmed earlier said the federal government will borrow over N11 trillion and sell national assets to finance the budget deficit in 2023.
She also said the government's budget deficit is expected to exceed N12.42 trillion should it keep the petroleum subsidy for the entire 2023 fiscal cycle.
She gave these details at the times she appeared before the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Finance to defend the 2023-2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).
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She proposed two options for the lawmakers to consider for the 2023 budget. First, the deficit is projected to be N12.41 trillion in 2023, up from N7.35 trillion budgeted in 2022, representing 196 per cent of total revenue or 5.50 per cent of the estimated GDP. In this option, she said, the government would spend N6.72 trillion on subsidy.
The second option, she explained, involves keeping subsidy till June 2023 and this scenario will take the deficit to N11.30 trillion, which is 5.01 per cent of the estimated GDP. In this option, the PMS subsidy is projected to gulp N3.3 trillion.
Already, the federal government plans to spend N18.6 billion daily on PMS.
The two proposals have budget deficits far above the stipulated threshold in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
