The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed through second reading, the N8.612 trillion Appropriation bill for the 2018 fiscal year. Breakdown of the budget show that the sum of N456,458,654,074 is for Statutory Transfers; N2,233,835,365,699 is for Debt Service; N3,494,277,820,219 is for Recurrent (Non-Debt) Expenditure while the sum of N2,427,665,113,222 is for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital expenditure.
Similarly, the House approved $47 crude oil benchmark price against the $45 and N5.279 trillion non-oil revenue against N6.607 recommended 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.
READ ALSO: Buhari transmits Finance Bill to National Assembly
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 the target by 43%.
READ ALSO: Reps pass N189.512 billion FCT Statutory budget for second reading
“Customs revenue was the best performing, netting N458.92 billion against the prorated N637.75 billion.” On the expenditure side, out of the 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 domestic and foreign debt servicing out of N1.663 trillion appropriated for the 2017 financial year.
According to the report, the Executive is expected to roll over a significant percentage of the capital component of the 2017 budget, in the expectation that the life of 2017 budge will end in December 2017, to bring back the January-December financial year in line with the recommendation of the budget reform committee. Meanwhile, the House resolved to adjourn the plenary session for two weeks to enable all the Standing Committees to embark on oversight of the 2017 budget implementation by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). To this end, all members are expected to reconvene on 19th December 2017, while the House will embark on Christmas recess on 21st December 2017.
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
