Various Standing Committees of both Senate and House of Representatives are expected to fully commence engagement with Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Heads of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) as from Tuesday, 9th January, 2018, BusinessDay can authoritatively report.
The National Assembly is also expected to receive the report of the Senate/House joint Conference Committee on Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency (NFIU) which was set up prior to the winding down of legislative activities a fortnight ago.
It is however uncertain whether the Ad-hoc Committee on Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), chaired by Ado Doguwa, will convey its inaugural meeting.
Efforts by our Correspondent to reach him proved abortive as his phone was switched off, althrough the weekend.
Recall that all the Senators and members of House of Representatives had on Thursday, 21st December, 2017 embarked on two week recess to enable them travel to their various senatorial districts and federal constituencies to celebrate the Christmas and New Year.
Going by the resolution of both chambers, legislative activities are to resume in earnest, Tuesday.
The N8.612 trillion Appropriation bill for the 2018 fiscal year was passed by both chambers barely seven days before the recess, and referred to the joint Committees on Appropriation; Finance; Loans, Aids & Debt Management as well as Budget & Research for further legislative action.
Breakdown of the budget show that the sum of N456,458,654,074 was proposee for Statutory Transfers; N2,233,835,365,699 is for Debt Service; N3,494,277,820,219 was for Recurrent (Non-Debt) Expenditure while the sum of N2,427,665,113,222 was for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital expenditure.
Prior to the passage of the 2018 budget, the National Assembly had approved $47 crude oil benchmark price against the $45 and N5.279 trillion non-oil revenue against N6.607 trillion proposed by the Executive in the budget estimate laid by President Muhammadu Buhari to the joint session of the National Assembly.
However, the House adopted other parameters namely: $305/$; N1.699 trillion new borrowing; N350 billion and N150 billion for social development and 3.5% GDP especially with the latest figures indicating a doubling of growth rate to 1.4% in the Q3 of 2017.
During the consideration of the report on the 2018-2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper, the House noted that the”fiscal strategy intends to broaden revenue receipts by identifying and plugging revenue leakages, improving efficiency and quality of capital spending, greater emphasis on critical infrastructure, rationalization of recurrent expenditure and gradual fiscal consolidation to maintained the fiscal deficit below 3% of GDP as prescribed by FRA 2007.”
In the bid to meet the revenue target for the incoming year, the House stressed the need for “government to develop interface finance mechanisms for the budget infrastructure project.
“Efforts should be geared towards enhancing the mobilization of non-oil revenue from looted funds, unclaimed funds in dormant accounts, redundant government assets scattered across the country that can be liquidated and pension funds and trust fund as well as amending the Fiscal Responsibility Act to require MDAs to deposit a certain percentage of their gross revenues into the Consolidated Revenue Fund instead of percentage of their operating surplus which they arbitrarily determine.”
Breakdown of the revenue performance from January to September 2017, showed that N2.858 trillion was realized from oil revenue against the prorated N3.975 trillion while total non-oil revenues fell short of target by 43%.
“Customs revenue was the best performing, netting N458.92 billion against the prorated N637.75 billion.”
On the expenditure side, out of total appropriation of N7.441 trillion, only N481.355 billion has been expended on capital projects; recurrent (non-debt) component releases including statutory transfer was N2.683 trillion; N1.540 trillion (90%) was expended on domestiv and foreign debt servicing out of N1.663 trillion appropriated for the 2017 financial year.
National Assembly also adopted the proposal by the Executive to roll-over significant percentage of the capital component of the 2017 budget.
However, the Legislature declined to accede to the request by the Executive to bring back the January-December financial year.
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
