The Senate will commence debate on general principles of the N8.612 trillion 2018 appropriation bill next week.
This is even as the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun; her counterpart in Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma are expected to appear before the Joint Committee on Appropriation, Finance and National Planning on the 2018 to 2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) on Tuesday next week.
Specifically, the budget debate will begin on Wednesday and Thursday next week.
Senate President Bukola Saraki who revealed this at Thursday plenary, also announced that copies of the 2018 budget proposal will be distributed to lawmakers on Monday, preparatory to the budget debate.
He also urged senators to indicate the date they would like to contribute to the budget debate in a register that would be opened on Monday.
“There will be a register that will be opened. And you can put in the dates you will like to contribute to the (budget) debate,” Saraki said.
The budget is expected to be referred to the Joint Committee on Appropriation and Finance after the debate.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had on November 7, presented to a joint session of the National Assembly a budget estimate of N8.612 trillion for the 2018 fiscal year.
The proposed N8.612 trillion aggregate expenditure comprises recurrent costs of N3.494 trillion; debt service of N2.014 trillion; statutory transfers of about N456 billion; sinking fund of N220 billion (to retire maturing bond to local contractors) as well as capital expenditure of N2.652 trillion, representing 30.8 percent of the budget.
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Appropriation, Finance and National Planning will have an interactive session with the Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun, her counterpart in Budget and National Planning Udoma Udo Udoma, Director General Budget Office Ben Akabueze as well as DG Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha on the 2018 to 2020 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) on Tuesday next week.
It was learnt that the joint committee held a meeting on Wednesday, November 15, 2017, in readiness for the interactive session.
The session will hold at Conference Hall 231, Senate New Building, Abuja, by 12noon.
Senate spokesperson, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, told newsmen on Thursday that the MTEF/FSP would be approved before the 2018 budget is passed, in line with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.
In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, John Enoh, said the upper legislative chamber is committed to quick passage of MTEF/FSP.
His words: “We will take the agencies (at the interactive session) as quickly as possible and after we take them, we will come out with our report. So, everybody is concerned that we need to handle this and treat it with dispatch”.
In his budget presentation, President Buhari had called for expeditious passage of the budget by December 31, 2017, to return to a more predictable January to December budget cycle.
However, Saraki did not give a firm commitment on whether the National Assembly would pass the budget estimates by December 31st.
“The early passage of the 2018 budget will depend on this good working relationship (between the President and lawmakers)”, the Senate President had said.
The key parameters and assumptions for the 2018 budget with a deficit of N2.005 trillion include an oil benchmark of $45 per barrel, oil production estimate of 2.3 million barrels per day, exchange rate of N305/$1, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP ) growth of 3.5 percent and an inflation rate of 12.4 percent.
