The Federal Government has informed the Senate that it is contemplating sending back the 2024 Appropriation Bill, totaling N27.5 trillion, to the National Assembly.
This move aims to adjust the budget size in response to potential increases in revenue.
During the budget defense session in Abuja yesterday, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, addressed the Committee on Finance led by Senator Sani Musa (APC, Niger East).
Edun highlighted the significant economic improvement and stated that should there be an upsurge in revenue, the Federal Government would be compelled to revisit the National Assembly for the necessary appropriation of the additional funds.
The Minister said: “The revenue performance was encouraging; it is expected to continue to be encouraging. There is fiscal policy and tax reform committee which is already at work. It is meant to provide fundamental change together with digitalization, greater efficiency in collection because its revenue to debt that can give us the opportunity to even increase this budget.
“If we have a solid revenue performance, we will come back and am sure Tinubu will authorise the process is return to the National Assembly to appropriate extra revenue. That is a situation we are all looking forward.”
Bola Tinubu presented the 2024 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly last Wednesday, outlining an expenditure proposal of N27.5 trillion.
He expressed the administration’s commitment to adopting the “revised 2024–2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP)” as the basis for the upcoming budget.
Moreover, Tinubu announced plans to achieve a minimum economic growth of 3.76 percent, surpassing the projected global average.
In a further statement, Edun highlighted the government’s focus on expediting the procurement process to boost capital spending in the 2024 budget.
He said: “When we look at actual budget performance, expenditure as at 3rd quaters of the year which is September, was 32 percent below the budget estimate, revenue was five percent up, the revenue performance is quite encouraging, debt service, because of change in exchange rate, a depreciation of the currency and the fact we have foreign debt of about $46billion outstanding, means that debt service was up by 18 percent.
Capital expenditure performed below budget quite significantly. We are looking at issue of procurement process and ways to speed up capital spending, in term of overall balance of the budget.
Fiscal deficit is expected to come down from N13.7 trillion to N9.2 trillion and importantly, the deficit, the amount of the budget to be funded by borrowing is down from 6.1 percent to 3.9 percent that is percent of GDP and Capital expenditure remains at 32 percent, so that is the while structure of the budget.”