From Fred Itua, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari will on Friday present a projected N19.76 trillion 2023 budget to a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The presentation as contained in a letter by President Muhammadu Buhari and read in plenary, yesterday, by President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, would take place by 10:00am.
It would be Buhari’s last budget as his reign terminates on May 29, 2023 when a new president would be sworn-in and whose government would come up with the country’s next budget.
Lawan after reading the letter, informed senators that the presentation would take place at the temporary Chamber of the House of Representatives, which he said, had been put in place to accommodate all 469 federal lawmakers, the President and his entourage.
Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed had in August at the consideration of the budget proposals, announced that the total budget size would be N19.76trillion
She said the Federal Government may not be able, in the 2023 fiscal year, to make provision for treasury funded capital projects as deficit in the prosed budget would either be N11.30 trillion or N12.41trillion .
Basic assumptions or parameters for the proposed N19.76trillion budget as submitted by her are $70 oil price benchmark per barrel, projected daily oil production of 1.69million, exchange rate of N435.57 to a dollar, 3.7 per cent real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate and 17.16 per cent inflation rate .