Members of the Conference Committee on the 2015 budget on Wednesday adopted $53 per barrel as official oil benchmark for the year’s budget, BusinessDay learnt. The Conference Committee also agreed on N190 to $1 as official exchange rate in the 2015 budget. The Conference Committee unanimously resolved to reduce the N150 billion annual budget for the National Assembly by N30 billion as part of measures to reduce the cost of governance. The committee comprises members of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The resolution was reached at the joint meeting held at the National Assembly, where both parties reviewed the 2015-2017 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Strategy Policy Paper submitted by the Federal Government. The Senate during the consideration of the budget proposal had adopted $52 while the House of Representatives adopted $54 per barrel. The report is expected to be laid on the floor of both chambers today, Thursday. The Conference Committee also upheld the resolution of both chambers to scrap the N360 billion proposed for service wide vote for the year.
Meanwhile, the long awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will be laid before the House during plenary session. Sources, who spoke with our correspondent, however, noted that most of the members of the ad hoc committee headed by Mohammed Bawa at the venue of the meeting held on Wednesday protested against the engagement of a technical committee and subsequent denial from making inputs into the report. One of the aggrieved members who reacted to the issue, said, “To me, the whole thing is looking to be a fraud because there are other committees that must have one or two inputs in the report.
“For instance, issues of environment, climate change are key features of this bill and to have cut out these critical committees is questioning the credibility of the report. “I can assure you that a big surprise would be waiting for them should they try to lay the report tomorrow (today) because none of those critical committees were carried along in the preparation of the report. “How is it possible that members that were not consulted are expected to vote and hurriedly pass the report on the floor? How can you meaningfully contribute to the consideration of the report?”
