History as NASS slashes budget

•Passes N6.060trn 2016 budget

From Fred Itua, Abuja
THE Eighth National As­sembly made history on Wednesday when it passed the N6.06 trillion 2016 Ap­propriation Bill, reduced by N17 billion.
That would be the first time in the history of the Fourth Republic that a fed­eral budget would be passed without a raise.
Exactly three months af­ter President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2016 budget to a joint session , the two chambers of the Na­tional Assembly, yesterday, passed N6,060,677,358,227, to be issued from the Feder­ation Account.
The new budget was re­duced by N17,002,641,773 from the original N6,077,680,000,000 pro­posed by Buhari.
In the new budget, capital expenditure is N1,060 tril­lion while recurrent expen­diture was reduced by N2.2 billion from a proposed N2.648 trillion to N2.646 trillion.
The budget was predicat­ed on an oil benchmark of $38 dollars per barrel, with daily crude oil production of 2.2 million barrels and an exchange rate of N197 to a dollar. sectoral allocations indicated that the Interior Ministry got N513 billion for recurrent and capital expenditure while Defence got n442 billion closely fol­lowed by Education with N403.1 billion.
The Health ministry got N221.4 billion for both re­current and capital expen­diture but Power, Works and Housing Ministry got N422.9 billion alone for capital expenditure for 2016.
Presenting the report of the Committee on Appro­priation for consideration in the Senate, Danjuma Goje observed that because the budget was presented late, it did not give ample time for consideration.
He recalled how the 2016 budget was fraught with some inconsistencies from federal ministries, depart­ments and agencies (MDAs) and added that available revenue was inadequate to meet demands.
On his part, Deputy Sen­ate President Ike Ekweren­madu said although the executive presented a pro­posal, it was the job of the Senate to make up the laps­es.
Across the lobby, in the House of Representatives, Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila insisted that the position of the House, which is that Excess Crude Account (ECA) is illegal, must be emphasised.
Back to the Red Chamber, Senate President, Dr. Buko­la Saraki commended com­mittees of the National As­sembly for a job well done.
He said that the budget re­flected an efficient and equi­table allocation of resources and expressed optimism that in future, the hiccups experienced in the budget would be avoided through more interactions between the budget office and other agencies.
“It is the duty of the ex­ecutive to ensure full imple­mentation of this budget as part of the campaign to bring succour to our people. While implementing , we charge the executive also considers the areas of sup­porting locally produced goods in order to help our economy.
“I also particularly ob­served that we have made an effort to reduce the size of the budget in our own view to ensure that we reduce our deficit and also reduce our level of borrowing. As much as possible we all want a budget that is sustainable.
Briefing National Assem­bly correspondents after the budget passage, Abdul­mumin Jibrin, who chairs the Appropriation Commit­tee in the House of Repre­sentatives said it was the first time since 1999 that the country is witnessing a reduction in aggregate ex­penditure. He said though the budget estimates were huge, the National Assem­bly was able to effect a cut in the initial estimates.
“We all know the chal­lenges that accompanied this bill and often times, with overheads being most contentious.
“We engaged the Execu­tive and the Budget Office on it because we also dis­covered that several critical items that were not in the budget.
“We had to allocate funds to those areas. We also have to tilt some allo­cations in favor of security, anti corruption drive in or­der to strike a balance with the policy thrust of the gov­ernment,” he said.
The Committee also said almost all parts of the bill presented to the National Assembly were tinkered with except for President Muhammadu Buhari’s N500b intervention pro­grammes.