The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a 2022 budget of N17.126 trillion against the N16.391 trillion sum presented by the president.
Christened “Budget of Economic Growth and Sustainability”, sources said the budget would be passed by the Senate tomorrow Wednesday.
While the major capital, recurrent, debt service, statutory transfers remain untouched, the House made provision for an increase by N400 billion for agencies that came forward with financial reports which were not captured in the proposed budget, such as INEC, Ministries of Humanitarian Affairs, the National Assembly, and more.
In passing the bill, the House increased the benchmark price for crude from $57 to $62 per barrel, from which a proposed increase in revenue is expected.
The lawmakers also made provision for 10 percent of monies recovered by EFCC and the National Financial Intelligence Unit to be utilised by the agencies for their operations, to strengthen their fight against corruption.
The budget deficit was increased by N98 billion to accommodate some other requests of national importance which have not been captured in the budget estimates and which could not be covered by the revenue increase.
Originally, the budget consists of Statutory Transfer of N869,667,187,542; Debt Service of N3,879,952,981,550 and Recurrent (Non-Debt) Expenditure of N6,909,849,788,737 and Capital Expenditure of N5,467,403,959 863
Giving his report shortly before the House dissolved into Committee of Supply for the clause-by-clause consideration of the report, the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations, Mukhtar Betera, gave the highlights of the budget.
He said: “The House debated on the General principles of the Bill on Tuesday through Thursday, October 14, read it a second time, and consequently referred same to the Committee on Appropriations for further legislative action.
“The Committees on Appropriations of both the House and Senate met and drew up a work plan to guide the processing of the Appropriation Bill, which was approved by the National Assembly leadership.
Subsequently, the Committee engaged its Sub-Committee Chairmen on Monday, October 18, on the approved time table and relevant guidelines provided for the processing of the Bill.
“Sub-Committees were given both the hard and soft copies of the schedules of the budgetary proposal under their jurisdiction for detailed analysis and consideration.
“An additional guideline provided to Chairmen of the Sub-Committees directed them not to tamper with the N1,153.823,207,500 MultiLateral/Bi-Lateral Project-tied Loans in the capital component of the proposed budget in their deliberations and consideration.
“In the same vein, on conclusion of work on the 2022 budget engagement/defense with MDAs under their jurisdiction, Sub-Committees submitted and defended their reports before the Appropriations Committee from Wednesday 10th to Friday, November 26.
